Back Into the Machine

One of the common tenets of monotheism is the love of God for his people. Setting aside questions of existence for the moment, I nevertheless have to wonder about this. After all, the assumption is never really explained. What makes us so sure God loves us? In fact, what makes us so sure God can love at all?

It is, of course, futile to try to understand the mind of God. His perceptions would be so far beyond and different from the merely human that even the words "beyond" and "different" imply too much of a connection and similarity to really have any meaning. Nevertheless, There are two things that we know for certain about God, two things which are contained in the definition of such a deity: omniscience and omnipotence.

Now, those are easy words to say, but hard to understand. What does that mean, exactly, if we try to break it down into pieces a human can understand? What is it like to know everything?

God can never know doubt. He must always and forever be convinced, with absolute certainty, of his rightness. In fact, rightness isn't even a concept that applies to God - existence supercedes morality.
God can never feel sorrow. He has no regrets, and not in the same way that people say they have no regrets, which is a sign of either arrogance or duplicity. God actually has no regrets, has never, in the entire history of his existence, done something wrong.
God can never question existence. If God believes he exists, he does. If God believes you exist, you do.
God can never suffer loss. Nothing can ever be out of his reach, nothing can ever be withheld from his grasp.
God can never be betrayed. Stories of Lucifer aside, omniscience precludes betrayal. Omnipotence makes enmity irrelevant. To be the enemy of God is more absurd and worthless than being the enemy of the colour blue. (More impossible than hating pie?)
God can never have respect for another.

Can you love someone who you cannot lose? Can you love someone who you know with certainty to exist? I don't think so. I don't think you can have love without the fear of loss, without the tiniest of doubts that it can be real. Love is one of many attempts by we, the lost, to hold back the darkness - and for God, there is no darkness. For God, there is no fear. God can never lose anyone, and so no one is worthy of his love.

I would say it seems lonely, such an existence, but of course that, too, is ridiculous. God can never be lonely, because perfection is self-contained. God has no needs or desires - in fact, is incapable of desiring anything.

But, if God has no desires, no need for anything outside of himself, must he not be deterministic? Operating according to a set of rules, layed down by himself, for all eternity? There is no room for randomness or chance or free will in a system of perfection. There is no room for humanity to intrude into Godhood. God has no need of love, because love is built on a foundation of poverty. Love is the wish for something you do not have, the desire to keep and hold that which you do, the need to raise up something else above yourself and make it greater than you could ever hope to be. None of this is possible for God.

Is God, then, nothing more than a great world-machine, a series of concentric crystal spheres, spinning in place from the beginning to the end of time - and after? Deus Machina, with nothing to disrupt the perfect, inevitable operation of its flawless mechanism?

Not nothing more, I think. Nothing less.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

One of my favorite short stories is "The Ultimate Melody" by Arthur C. Clarke, which can be found in Tales of the White Hart, if you go looking for it - which I highly recommend.

The premise is simple: There are some songs which stick in your mind, so insidiously and completely that you find yourself humming them for weeks, or even months. I myself have been known to sing Greensleeves or Girl in the shower, over and over again, because something about the songs sticks in my head in such a way that I can't get them out.

What is frightening about this, though, is that the song will, for a time, drive from your head all thoughts other than the song - it will make concentration impossible, it will leave you unable to carry on conversations or do work without being distracted. We've all experienced this, of course - when a song gets stuck so thoroughly in your head that it's all you can think of.

So why does this happen? Well, the premise espoused in the story is that the music we find compelling is just a reflection of the Ultimate Melody, a song which resonates perfectly with the human brain. Weird, maybe, but an interesting idea - and one that starts to seem more possible when you think about how songs break out, catch people's minds seemingly simultaneously and completely, and then die away again.

So what would happen if we could synthesize such a thing? All it would take is a computer running through lists of possible sounds, selecting for the combinations and melodies which humanity finds most catchy - and, given some time, the ultimate melody is within your grasp.

But of course, as ever, when reaching for the very top, mankind's hubris turns on us, and the scientist who creates the melody becomes an empty shell, his mind totally taken over by the strands and chords of the song to end all songs. After all, even a simple toon or ditty can erase thought from one's mind - the ultimate melody must have power vastly beyond such a thing.

But my question is - what would that be like? To hear the ultimate melody, and never to turn back; to give your mind over to the music of the heavens? It wouldn't be like death, exactly. More like transcendance.

And the answer? Yep. It would be worth it. I would do that.