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.

Too Much Metaphysics

A week ago, when I underwent surgery, I was given a choice between a general, full anesthetic and a spinal anesthetic, which would paralyze me and remove all feeling from the waist down. Now, my initial inclination was that the full anesthetic would be greatly preferable: I didn't want to be awake for surgery, which I think is a reasonable thing to want to avoid. However, the anesthetist strongly recommended the spinal, adding that, as I would be on morphine, throughout the operation, I would not remember any of the procedure. In the end, I went with her recommendation: after all, a medical professional I am not.

Now, this story is mostly background for what I want to talk about, but I think it's useful in seeing where these speculations come from.

For two and a half hours, I was awake, aware, and remember nothing. This is a fact with shocking implications: if the memories of my life are not contiguous, can it really be said to be me who underwent those experiences? Certainly my physical body did: I have medical staples and a nicely healing scar to prove it. I'm not sure it can. Who we are is in many ways defined by our memories: they are what gives our personality shape and substance, and any point of interaction with the world must inevitably be a structure of memory, not of awareness. While I am sitting here typing these words in some kind of Now, soon it will be simply yet another piece in an ever-growing Then.

And if I don't remember experiencing those things, if I therefore never experienced those things - at least for a reasonable definition of "I" - who did? Some sort of mystical other-me, who existed for those two hours and then disappeared - or died? Or maybe it is the other way around, since after all, his memories were contiguous: everything from my birth to the end of those two hours he remembered, and it is I who have this strange hole in my past. Maybe waking up in the recovery room was when I was born?

But what really bothers me is the choice I made - to experience something unpleasant, but to have no memory of it. If it was not me who underwent that experience, then did I not force someone else to bear my burden? Do I not have the blood and fear of the other-me on my hands?

This is why I hate metaphysics: something interesting always becomes something just a little too disturbing. Of course, I suppose that is rather the point.