Philosophy

Here are some of my thoughts on the nature of God. Nothing new here in the Christian sense, certainly. The subject was on my mind due to a project I’m working on, but I thought I’d record my thoughts here. That said, I don’t claim these thoughts necessarily represent the “Christian view” of God in some sort of scholarly totality or summation, but they certainly don’t oppose it. These thoughts are short and quite basic. (And rather sloppily written. If one is interested in the subject, I’m sure plenty of philosophers have done a better job of writing about the subject than me, and certainly in more depth.)

Firstly, the nature of God is supreme goodness. As in, they are equal, they are the same thing. One does not exist independently of the other. God does not “decide” what is “good” as if God exists first, and then creates or decides what is good, or as if He defines what is good by doing arbitrary things that are then considered good just because He did them. Rather, they are the same thing. To believe that there is an absolute goodness against which anything else may be judged is to believe in God. Notice that you cannot judge goodness to be good or bad in and of itself. It is good by definition. You can’t say, “Ah, good is actually bad!” In this way, you cannot logically say that God is bad or does wrong things. Otherwise you are judging Him to a higher standard, and that higher standard would then be God, not the entity you’re blaming for doing wrong things.

God is also absolute truth. Again, the same thing. Not “God defines truth” or “creates truth” or something. They’re inherent in each other. To accept one is to accept the other.

God is also love. Once again, the same thing. Not “God loves” or “God decides what love is”. God and love are the same thing. When one experiences love (though its incomplete in this life), one experiences the actual God (or at least part of God, because our experience is currently imperfect).

In this way, we see these things — supreme goodness, absolute truth, and love — are all inherent in each other, and that is what we call God.

From this, one can see that the nature of God transcends human consciousness (and is “invisible” and “mysterious” in His totality in this way). That is, God is not a human-like consciousness with just a bunch of power, as a god like Zeus might be understood. He is not inherently separate from the physical world or a human consciousness in the manner that our minds are separate from each other’s minds and our physical bodies are separate from other objects in our environment. (I think this is usually the sort of God atheists reject, which I do too. The misunderstanding comes from thinking of God and absolute truth as separate sorts of things that can be compared to one another.)

Finally, and this is the most profound part and difficult to express, God and humans are part of each other. Not metaphorically, like in a story when some character says “I’ll be in your heart!” Literally. A human soul is made of God. God made you out of Himself, and you remain in Himself (whether or not you experience it). You and God are more intimately connected than you can understand in this world; seeing God allows you to know yourself completely. This is why God “knows you” better than you know yourself and why you can keep no secrets from Him. He is not “spying” on you from outside your consciousness with magical powers; you are part of His nature. This is also why He can hear all your prayers. This is not to say that you are God. Obviously you’re not. God is the totality of which you are a part; you are a part of God and God is present in your being. To do good deeds is to act in accordance with your nature, which is in accordance with God.

Furthermore, to “see” this connection, to see God through the self, or the self through God, is to experience the most comfort and joy and purity you can ever know. Of course, we are clouded from this connection in this current life, save for an intellectual or spiritual understanding, but it can be experienced before death. (I don’t know how. Wish I did! Certainly an honest prayer is probably where to begin.)

OK, I’m tired, so I’m not sure I’ve expressed my thoughts as well as I might have otherwise, but there it is. God bless!

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play,” said Arthur C. Clarke.

Seems a reasonable guess, considering the promises of technological innovations.

But I’d say the technology is already here, today. We have it. We have the technology to allow us to play the days away, living life enjoying each other’s company rather than laboring and stressing over work done for money. There are still some things we must do, such as maintain our electric and water maintenance facilities, our farming and food distribution, our public safety and emergency services. What else? These services don’t need to cost anything but time, in the same way our household chores cost nothing but time. We just train an entire community to do these things, and then someone will only have to volunteer a couple hours every week or month at most.

A lot of the work most people do nowadays is, in the big scheme of things, unnecessary. We sell things and provide services to each other that we really don’t need. We want to protect ownership and private property so we won’t bother each other. Get off my property! We just like giving someone else the privelege of our working hours in exchange for the money so that we can turn around and make the same trade with someone else for whatever services or goods we want. Want, because other people have them. Want, but don’t need. (Plus, having grown up in such an environment, we feel safe with it, for the most part. There’s some strange fear that the world might collapse if we change things too drastically. Nevermind how drastically things have already changed in just the last century. Who wants to go live in 1913?)

Ultimately, most of our economics are based on vanity, and that may be the hardest thing to give up. We like to protect the possibility of getting that new gadget, bragging about our next achievement, buying a big house. Can we share? No, it’s mine! Socialist!

But, if we did give it up, we’d all be far wealthier than we could imagine, because life would be one big playtime. Isn’t that the sort of life people desire to gain through wealth? And all this time, the cost isn’t actually monetary.

Haven’t posted much in a while. Continuing to work on my novel; my progress can be read about on my writing blog. Also making some slow progress on my search for Strong AI. Anyway, he’s a post about thinking.

As humans, we don’t very often turn our brains off, save for the deeper cycles of sleep. While awake, we’re almost always thinking about something.

So what are you thinking about? The possibilities include:

1. Going over stuff that happened. Perhaps to try to make sense of it. Perhaps to guess at other people’s intentions (which may lead to delusions). Perhaps to decide what you’ll do should you find yourself in the situation again.

2. Daydreaming. Just making up scenarios for yourself, putting yourself in really awesome situations that you’d love to live through, or really awful situations in an effort to prepare for them. A form of self-comfort or self-torture.

3. Deciding what to do. What should you eat for dinner? What movie should you watch? What book should you read? Should you take a shower now or later? What should you say to that guy you need to talk to? The answer is trivial, but still requires at least some thought.

4. Observing. Or, I might say, paying attention. Perhaps watching squirrels scurry along branches, or ants build their dirt mounds. Perhaps watching TV or listening to music or reading a blog post. This may be paired with another form of thinking, but you have to dedicate some brain power to making sense of what your watching or reading or listening to if you’re truly paying attention to it.

5. Deep problem-solving. This is when you’re solving a problem you’ve never solved before and don’t plan on needing to solve again. Perhaps a particular chess position. Perhaps a mathematical conundrum. Perhaps a philosophical consideration. Perhaps a scientific query. Perhaps an algorithmic design. Coming up with a solution (or coming to understand someone else’s solution) may take weeks, months, or even years, but the solution will usually result in a paradigm shift, forever shaping how you understand something from then on.

6. Praying. More than a recitation of memorized word sequences (though it may include them), I consider this to be a profound idea. In fact, I’m not even sure how to describe it off the top of my head. At it’s foundation, it’s a form of honest self-reflection, humble thankfulness for existing, and perhaps a request for something desired (forgiveness if nothing else). What makes it profound is the idea that the prayer is being heard by an entity you neither have the capacity to fully understand nor hear in return.

7. Meditating. Purposefully trying not to think about anything, or at least much less than usual. (There may be more to it depending on who you ask; I can’t claim to be a meditation guru.)

———-

The first three or four are so easy that many spend their lives never daring to try to solve a deep problem or reflecting on the nature of spiritual things. So, the exercise is, as you’re going about you’re day, try to notice what you’re thinking about and perhaps try to think differently. If you’re spending all your time going over something or daydreaming, move on to some deep problem-solving. Try to come up with theories to explain something. If you’re spending too much time deciding what to do, try observing something. You’ll get new ideas. Obviously, try praying at some point, and thinking about the nature of God and life and eternity.

I think there’s a lot of stress and fear out there. The basic fears: Will I find a job? Will I have enough money? Enough food? Shelter? And then there are deeper fears that claw at one’s heart, even if people are too afraid to challenge them face to face: Am I good-looking? Am I loved? Am I worthy of love? Am I worth anything? Am I a good person? Do I belong here?

What saddens me just as much as the recent shooting is the number of people encouraging others to be enraged by it, to fuel themselves with the spirit of anger. The idea that anger and rage will somehow bring about justice is a terrible folly; these emotions only make truth harder to see. The world is ruled more by the spirit of our hearts than the coverage of our laws. We should be working for heart change more than law change. Otherwise, even with stricter laws, things are going to get much worse.

If you want to make a huge difference, think of the person or types of people you hate the most, and abandon that hate, give it up. And when someone or something makes you feel hurt and hated and fills you with that rage again, give it up again. You may not see the ripple effect this will produce; this world is too complex for our tiny minds. But all humans are connected and it will ripple. We may still disagree on things, but then our discussions will be fueled by love of truth, not contempt for rivalry.

And give up your fears. It’s a supreme, almost unnatural act of trust, but there is no real wisdom in suffering yourself with them.

Somebody else already taught these things a couple thousand years ago, but His message is doubted or ignored, perhaps because it sounds too good to be true, or perhaps because we think we’re too modern and smart for it nowadays. We’ll be celebrating His birth soon, a good time to remember that it’s all true. And this physical life is just the beginning.

God bless.

I find it curious to consider the nature of three-dimensional space as an experience of physical interaction more than some physical reality in and of itself. Spacial dimensions do not exist in the experience of thought, after all. If one thinks of a chicken, then thinks of a brick wall, one does not have to travel any sort of distance through other thoughts to get from one to the other. The change in the experience of the two thoughts is instantaneous. (We may even combine them to form the thought of a chicken in front of a brick wall.)

What concerns me, however, is: where is the chicken when I’m not thinking about it? From what do I create the thought of a chicken?

One may say: “Well, it’s in your memory.” But then from what do I create the mental instructions to fetch the memory?

I’m not asking why I desire to form the thought of a chicken, whether it’s because I saw the word “chicken” or because I was asked to think of an animal that goes “cluck-cluck” or because I’m hungry. It doesn’t matter why I’m persuaded to form the thought. I’m wondering how I have the ability to conjure the appropriate thought in the first place.

It’s a puzzling mystery to me.

As the media continues to celebrate sexuality in an ever-increasing “anything goes” manner, Christians may find themselves unsure of what to make of it. On the one hand, we do want to be fair and equal people, treating each other with dignity and respect. How can we not want each other to be truly happy? On the other hand, these issues didn’t arise yesterday; religious teachings on the spirituality of the sexual nature of humans are not some ancient arbitrary teachings like “the world is flat” that movies and TV shows are just now calling into question. Everyone understands that our own sexual natures are something intimate and special to us, otherwise there’d be no issue about this in the first place.

If approached with an open heart in a true spirit of seeking understanding, these can actually be healthy conversations to have. (Not that many people would actually want to have them, which only helps to demonstrate how naturally intimate the subject is.)

But we can’t approach the subject with the premises that:

1. “people who disagree with each other actually fear or hate each other” or that
2. “surrendering to your natural temptations is accepting who you are” or that
3. “as long as you’re not hurting other people, whatever you think or do is OK” or that
4. “there is nothing spiritual about sex” or that
5. “sexual actions are just a matter of love and happiness.”

These are the “trick” premises the opponents use in an attempt to take advantage of a Christian’s good nature. (Which isn’t to say that people don’t honestly believe these premises.)

The first two tricks seek to frame the argument as if it’s only about love and acceptance, which it is not. It’s about the morality of sexual acts, not whether we or not we love each other. Still, framing the argument this way is a good way to get a lot of Christians to believe they’re on their side. But it is like the child who begs for ice-cream, claiming that his father doesn’t love him if he doesn’t give him what he wants. And if the father can only ever prove his love on the child’s terms, what can he do, and what can his love ever be worth to his child?

The second trick is especially nonsense, yet people will accept it without question. If you find yourself angry and wanting to hit someone, would you accept the violence as “just being who you are”? When you find yourself envious of a rich man who lives in a mansion, do you honestly think it’s because you were born to live in a mansion, and that’s just who you are? The worst thing about this trick is that it denies your Free Will, your ability to choose what to do. It persuades you that surrendering to your instinctual desires a perfectly OK, because it’s who you are. No, it’s not. You are a conscious entity that can make your own choices. You do not have to be ashamed of a temptation, nor do you have to let it define you or control you. You are what you choose to be; you are not merely the sum of your natural desires.

The third trick seeks to persuade the Christian to just not care, and thereby not get in the way of whatever legal and societal changes they seek. This argument could also attempt to downplay the argument, as in: “there are worse things to worry about, like murder!” Similarly, I have heard Christians argue things like “same-sex marriage is nothing to worry about because so many opposite-sex marriages are already full of immoral sexual acts and divorce.” It is such an obviously fallacy, it is hard to know how to respond.

You may notice that the fourth and fifth tricks disagree with each other. If sex has something to do with love, then it has something to do with spirituality.

The fourth trick seeks to divorce sexual acts from any spiritual understanding at all. This trick would work wonderfully, were it not for our innate understanding of our own sexual natures, and how we understand them to be intimate and special to us. This is similar to how some atheists deny that there is any spirituality to life itself, but rightfully refuse to deny that there exists an objective morality that exists beyond and outside of our minds, or that love is just otherwise meaningless chemicals in the brain. Our acceptance or denial of this premise cannot be based on logic, just as we cannot logic ourselves to the rightfulness of Christianity. (Which isn’t to say that Christianity is illogical; it’s not at all. But it’s like trying to show the logicalness of logic itself; you can’t; you have to accept certain premises on their own terms before you can work with them.) In the end, it is a choice. Do we want seek the physical pleasures of this world, or do we trust our innate feelings that there’s more to life than constantly pleasing the physical sensations? Surely if there’s something worthwhile doing in the nursery school of the spirit that is this physical life, it is answering this question with as much certainty as we can. If we accept that “there is nothing spiritual about sex”, on what grounds can we ever deny that “there is nothing spiritual at all”?

The fifth trick again tries to remind the Christian that love is a good thing, as if that’s all the argument is about. It supposes that “love is love!” would be a good thing to remind each other. Sure love is love, but what does has that got to do with anything? It’s like arguing that two plus two should be allowed to equal five because “numbers are numbers.” Why not instead use the mantra “sex is love”? Could it be that even the opponents understand there is a difference? That not all sexual actions imply love, and that not all love requires to sexual intimacy? So, if the two are in and of themselves different things, we are left to ask: When is sexual intimacy an appropriate expression of love, and when is it not? And this what the thousands of years of Christian teachings on the morality and spirituality of sexual actions are all about, and seeking to oppose them is not new or revolutionary. Rather than considering these teachings or making arguments within their contexts, it is easier for the opponent to try to change the premises to appeal to Christians’ love and use tricks, which would be almost silly in and of themselves if so many Christians didn’t fall prey to them.