St. Augustine made the grave assumption that humans are the highest beings in a hierarchy of species. Given what I am reading about the extraordinary abilities of other animals in An Immense World, this is hard to accept. Each is equally miraculous, having their own manifestation of truth. As each has its own truth, based on a unique class of perceptions, the truth turns out to be relative. There are mathematical and logical truths that transcend it, but these seldom exist in the real world; they are only abstractions in our minds.
The modern findings presented in An Immense World would taint Augustine's proof of God: that since truth stands alone above us on the hierarchy, it must be synonymous with God, and if it is not, then God is above it. My position is that truth is not static, that God is every variety of truth, even ones that contradict each other, for duality is what sets all things in motion, serving as scales on the fulcrum of all spectra. There is truth in good and truth in evil, whatever those mean to the observer. As man is not alone at the top of the living hierarchy, he cannot be the sole interpreter of it.
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