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.

Chapter Three: Wherein Our Hero Does Discover the Universe, and All That It Contaims Within, There Being Sore Temptations and Terrible Perils Faced

I wrote this short piece of fiction a while back, on a whim, and have been told variously that it is "the best thing anyone has ever written, ever," that it is "confusing and poorly worded," and that it is "kinda funny, I guess." I'm still working on the decision of whether or not to include creative writing (As opposed to my normal lack of originality, I suppose) in the entries of this blog - so consider this to be a test, of sorts. Tell me what you think.

Divine Plan

I have heard that a belief in evolution used to be practically synonymous with atheism. To me, this seems unthinkable. Now that the first galactic survey has been completed, it is precisely the opposite: the world no longer has to choose between God and reality. We understand - I have always understood - that the two are inseparable.

When the first of the survey ships pulled itself away from the ring of satellites and factories endlessly turning in the upper reaches of Earth's orbit, we had no idea what we would find. We hoped for life, of course: some cousins among the stars to share our triumphs and our failures. But as I and the other pilots landed on world after world after world, what we would find became all too clear.

In our galaxy there are seven hundred and sixteen thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two planets capable of supporting life, and every last one of them does. A shocking discovery, of course, but not an eventuality we were unprepared to face. It was the manner of life they supported that took us by surprise.

Darwin's theory of evolution was originally posited to explain diversity, or so I have been told. But now, we have a much better understanding of the universe than poor Darwin, and we know that diversity - true diversity - is a myth. Seven hundred thousand worlds, and each and every one of them is indistinguishable from Earth - or at least, from Earth in the rough era of the late Cretacious.

At first, the dinosaurs were exhilarating. After all, many children choose early in their lives between careers in space travel or paleontology. Just because I am doing one doesn't mean I don't have a soft spot for the other. Or at least had. You see, after a while, the monotony of worlds inhabited only by thunder lizards became almost too much to bear.

Those with less experience than I of the endless dinosaur worlds - or perhaps merely those whose faith is stronger than my own - have called this irrefutable evidence of God's divine plan for humanity. Why else, they ask, would ours be the only world to be different? The only world to be struck by that disaster, that blessing, that allowed intelligent life to arise?

My Lord - or no longer my Lord - if what I am about to say is false, forgive me. But while my belief in You is unchanged, my faith is sorely troubled.

Seven hundred thousand worlds, and only one of them is different. Seven hundred thousand worlds, and only one of them was changed, by a disaster, an accident of space and time. I see no evidence of God's divine plan for humanity in this.

After all, I've walked on those worlds. I've stared Creation in the mouth. Stared God in the mouth.

It was full of teeth.

Politics, Philosophy, or Philolotics?

One of the most common (and most baffling) phenomena of the internet is the constant stream of polls and surveys we are subjected to. The amount of time people spend reading them and filling them out is simply staggering.

So, naturally, I had to get in on the action.

I've written a list of questions which may be slightly different from the usual fare of the internet quiz. Not all of them really have answers, but hopefully most of them make you do a double take, or at least think about the answers for a moment.

So, too, I have tried to steer away from the obvious and well-worn philosophical questions and instead present you with a list which I imagine is much more characteristic of my own branch of philosophical and political thought.

In no particular order:

1. How much would you pay to see a dragon?
2. How much would you pay to eat dragon meat?
3. Would you switch genders for a day?
4. If offered the chance, would you become a vampire?
------- b. How about a werewolf?
------- c. A merfolk?
------- d. A selkie?
------- e. Are there other mythical creatures you would be willing to become?
5. If God offered to trade places with you, would you do it?
6. If you were given the chance to be one of the colonists on humanity's first extraplanetary colony - knowing that it would mean never seeing Earth again - would you accept?
7. If a magical, religious, or technological artifact of immeasurable power was discovered - for example, the Holy Grail, the One Ring, or the Monolith of the Watcher - should we try to harness that power, or is it best to leave such things alone?
8. If the dinosaur-cloning pseudoscience from Jurassic Park would work, should we do it?
9. Do you believe in the existence of sentient alien life forms?
------- b. Is your answer a good thing?
10. If you could have robotic limbs that were indistinguishable from the real thing in all ways - including feeling - except stronger, more resilient, more precise, and faster, would you be signing up for the replacement?
11. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the worst thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
12. If you had to point to a single act or moment of history, and say "This is, absolutely, the best thing humanity as a species has ever done," what act or moment would you choose?
13. Is there a limit to knowledge? Is there a finite amount of stuff that can be known?
------- b. If so, how long will it take us to get there?
------- c. If not, is acquiring new knowledge a fruitless endeavour?
14. What are you actually doing right now?
15. Did you answer all the questions truthfully?
------- b. Is it possible to answer a question truthfully?

So, I hope those questions were interesting, bizarre, and thought-provoking, and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say by way of answers.

Also, if you haven't already, have a look at the comments on the previous post. I'm not sure how happy I am with the post itself, to be honest, but oh man, am I ever happy with the comments.

Inception!

It has been a fair while since I have done anything approaching writing out actual ideas, essays, and treatises, which I suspect will be the end focus of these pages, so I think I will begin by easing myself into it, with a few general observations about humanity.

One thing I have always found fascinating about people is that we like to think of there being six directions: forward, backwards, left, right, up, and down - always, interestingly, in that precise order - and yet we really only think in five of them. You see, humans, by nature, never look up; after all, evolutionarily speaking, looking up is foolish for creatures that live on wide-open plains: neither threats nor food could possibly be above us. Doubtless, our forest-dwelling ancestors would have spent a fair amount of time scanning the tree-branches above their heads, but years of savanna and grassland have beaten that awareness out of us.

It is a commonplace in the entertainment industry, for example, that audiences will happily observe what is going on below them, but will refuse to look upwards, even if their virtual lives (in the case of a video game) depend on it. The best place to ambush someone is from above, which is why the president of the united states always enters and leaves buildings under a tent: the secret service agents, however incredibly skilled and highly trained, know that they are most likely to miss an assassin above them.

What is interesting about this, however, is that it works in metaphor as well as reality. Humans must be forced and cajoled to look up, to find a higher purpose or greater ambition for their actions than just a personal one. Perhaps that is why it is said we were made in God's image. After all, for him, there isn't any up at all.