The State of the Cosmos

The state of the cosmos is... fallen, I guess, so, same as it ever was: We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 

As for my microcosmos, i.e., the disordered order of Bob, you’ve probably noticed the annoying uptick in productivity or blowhardity since I was baptized and confirmed last April. Not only do I have more to say, every day I fall further behind in saying it. 

Moreover, used to be the posts spontaneously structured themselves into a beginning, middle, and end, whereas nowadays they end in the middle or sometimes even the beginning. Could this simply be due to age and its inevitable wooliness? Grangag's never-ending stories? State of the cosmos or state of the onion?

I count about 250 posts since taking the plunge, so if we continue at this rate, it may end up being the most productive 12 month period in the blog's existence, although even I don't care about the quantity, rather, the immortality, i.e., deluding myself that if I write enough, it will be as if I cheated death. You know, like Joyce:  

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

There must be literally thousands of gags in here that no one will ever get. But hold on… If no one laughs, did the joke ever happen? You call that immortality? 

Let’s get back to our subject, or at least try to gain some ground on it and close the gap between (¶) and O.  

As I recall, we were talking about limitations on divine omnipotence, at least in a manner of speaking. We’re not presuming to tell God what he can or can't do, rather, only trying to make him a tad more intelligible. We get it:

Wisdom comes down to not instructing God on how things should be done.

And

Man calls "absurd" what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.

Understood. I give up already! 

Nownow, don't get carried away. For

God does not  ask for the submission of the intelligence, but rather an intelligent submission. 

Indeed, Raccoon Science is just like any other science or ology -- in this case, logology, or Oology. 

Note that the Logos as such is, among other things, the Reason of the cosmos. Thus logology, our reasoning about the Divine Reason (or perhaps vice versa).  

Either way, the cosmos is a surprisingly reasonable place despite its many enigmas and puzzles that will keep us busy for centuries arguing over what it all means.

Focus!

Okay! No need to yell.

Let’s get to what this is all leading to, which is the “relationship” between Relative and Absolute. 

The reason I put "relationship" in quotes is because it is already an attribute or entailment of the Relative as such. And the "reason" I capitalize Relative is because I think there is an aspect of it, or a way of thinking about it, that puts it on the same lofty plane as the Absolute. I would even argue suggest that the two -- Absolute and Relative -- may possibly be the Mother of all complementarities.  

And the reason I capitalize Mother is because… 

We’ll get to that?, but it has to do with the mega-complementarity of them all, which I suspect will come back to Mother, Father, and Child -- or, more abstractly, Beyond-Being, Being, and Logos, in what amounts to an intrinsic and eternally fertile tri-complementarity which is reflected down here, and come to think of it, may go back to Paul’s wise crack in the first paragraph about the the whole darn creation trying to give birth to something. 

Certainly Meister Eckhart thought in these maternal terms, and right there you see the problem, as I could easily jump down that hole and bring back a whole drove of hares. 

What, like Hare Krishna?

Shut up, Donny.

Let’s sketch out the possibilities: Absolute Absolute, Relative Absolute, and Absolute Relative. I don’t think we need to posit a “Relative Relative,” since that seems redundant, or at least not immediately intelligible. Let me think about it for a sec….

Hold on, I think it might make sense, in that it goes to the relations that exist in the cosmic harearchy, in which everything is relative to something above and below. For example, man is relative to animals below and angels above. In turn, there are hierarchies of animals and angels. It's a fractal cosmos.

Now, this scheme of Absolute Absolute / Relative Absolute / Absolute Relative / Relative Relative — how does it relate to Everything? Or is it the very scheme, skeleton, and framework itself?

I suspect the latter. That’s a solid lead. We’ll follow up on it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, our prayer:

The State of the Cosmos

The state of the cosmos is... fallen, I guess, so, same as it ever was: We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 

As for my microcosmos, i.e., the disordered order of Bob, you’ve probably noticed the annoying uptick in productivity or blowhardity since I was baptized and confirmed last April. Not only do I have more to say, every day I fall further behind in saying it. 

Moreover, used to be the posts spontaneously structured themselves into a beginning, middle, and end, whereas nowadays they end in the middle or sometimes even the beginning. Could this simply be due to age and its inevitable wooliness? Grangag's never-ending stories? State of the cosmos or state of the onion?

I count about 250 posts since taking the plunge, so if we continue at this rate, it may end up being the most productive 12 month period in the blog's existence, although even I don't care about the quantity, rather, the immortality, i.e., deluding myself that if I write enough, it will be as if I cheated death. You know, like Joyce:  

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

There must be literally thousands of gags in here that no one will ever get. But hold on… If no one laughs, did the joke ever happen? You call that immortality? 

Let’s get back to our subject, or at least try to gain some ground on it and close the gap between (¶) and O.  

As I recall, we were talking about limitations on divine omnipotence, at least in a manner of speaking. We’re not presuming to tell God what he can or can't do, rather, only trying to make him a tad more intelligible. We get it:

Wisdom comes down to not instructing God on how things should be done.

And

Man calls "absurd" what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.

Understood. I give up already! 

Nownow, don't get carried away. For

God does not  ask for the submission of the intelligence, but rather an intelligent submission. 

Indeed, Raccoon Science is just like any other science or ology -- in this case, logology, or Oology. 

Note that the Logos as such is, among other things, the Reason of the cosmos. Thus logology, our reasoning about the Divine Reason (or perhaps vice versa).  

Either way, the cosmos is a surprisingly reasonable place despite its many enigmas and puzzles that will keep us busy for centuries arguing over what it all means.

Focus!

Okay! No need to yell.

Let’s get to what this is all leading to, which is the “relationship” between Relative and Absolute. 

The reason I put "relationship" in quotes is because it is already an attribute or entailment of the Relative as such. And the "reason" I capitalize Relative is because I think there is an aspect of it, or a way of thinking about it, that puts it on the same lofty plane as the Absolute. I would even argue suggest that the two -- Absolute and Relative -- may possibly be the Mother of all complementarities.  

And the reason I capitalize Mother is because… 

We’ll get to that?, but it has to do with the mega-complementarity of them all, which I suspect will come back to Mother, Father, and Child -- or, more abstractly, Beyond-Being, Being, and Logos, in what amounts to an intrinsic and eternally fertile tri-complementarity which is reflected down here, and come to think of it, may go back to Paul’s wise crack in the first paragraph about the the whole darn creation trying to give birth to something. 

Certainly Meister Eckhart thought in these maternal terms, and right there you see the problem, as I could easily jump down that hole and bring back a whole drove of hares. 

What, like Hare Krishna?

Shut up, Donny.

Let’s sketch out the possibilities: Absolute Absolute, Relative Absolute, and Absolute Relative. I don’t think we need to posit a “Relative Relative,” since that seems redundant, or at least not immediately intelligible. Let me think about it for a sec….

Hold on, I think it might make sense, in that it goes to the relations that exist in the cosmic harearchy, in which everything is relative to something above and below. For example, man is relative to animals below and angels above. In turn, there are hierarchies of animals and angels. It's a fractal cosmos.

Now, this scheme of Absolute Absolute / Relative Absolute / Absolute Relative / Relative Relative — how does it relate to Everything? Or is it the very scheme, skeleton, and framework itself?

I suspect the latter. That’s a solid lead. We’ll follow up on it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, our prayer:

I Want to Speak to the Manager!

I don’t always disagree with Schuon, but when I do, Dupree asks me what I’ve been smoking and if he can buy some pot from me.  

I exaggerate. Let’s just say Dupree has never paid retail for pot.

But I do hesitate to disagree with Schuon, since he seems to have a source he doesn’t tell us about. A kind of Intrinsic Authority, if you will. Of course, every cult leader comes off as an unquestioned authority, and sends out a vibe to vertical cronies such as myself to Back off man, I’m a Shaykh, or Einstein of Consciousness, or 11th Degree Peltmaster.

That Schuon was a cult leader is neither here nor there. Rather, the question always and everywhere comes down to what is true, for there are good cults and bad cults. 

Jesus was a cult leader too, and indeed, every big-box religion starts out as a cult with a single person at the center, from Abraham to Moses and everyone in between, e.g.,  Gautama Buddha, Lao Tse, Mohammad, Martin Luther, Phineas Quimby, Clarence 13X, The Báb, Sai Baba, Bob Dobbs, et al.

I just now remembered a book I read back in the day, that day being in the late 1990s, called The Book of Enlightened Masters. The title is only quasi-ironic; as I recall, the author goes back and forth between a gentle skepticism and a freewheeling, indulgent benefit-of-the-doubt, vertical libertarianism.

And why not? Just because we don’t know, it doesn’t mean someone else might not know, especially when that someone speaks with such charismatic authority!

This may sound a bit odd, but I often extend this indulgent attitude to myself. How to explain it… 

Hold on a sec -- did this insolent Gagdad person just call me a cult leader? Ouch!

As to my own Intrinsic Authority, it’s like this: when I (The B'ob) really want to drill down into a primordial subject, -- which is most of the time -- I just begin writing about it, and at some point it’s like what I imagine it must be like for a lead guitarist, say, Derek Trucks, who is my favorite, since he combines so many influences. 

Suddenly the solo begins taking off, as if it has a mind of its own. Did I do that? Yes, but with the cooperation of some x-factor that wasn’t me at all. Come to think of it, pretty much every songwriter I’ve ever admired describes something similar. Is it grandiosity? Or humility? Or megalomodesty, AKA the Ultimate Humblebrag?

Matter of fact, just last night I was reading a book about The Beach Boys. Before trying to write a song (in this case with Randy Bachman), Carl Wilson would light a candle, put his hands together, and say, “Oh Great Spirit of Music, we are together as two souls and we ask for your guidance that we make good music together.” 

Say what you want, it often worked, for example, with the great song Feel Flows, which, as Dupree can tell you, “with its jazzy solos and mystical aura,” is "great stoner music.”

Anyway, more often than not, I don’t know what I think about something until I write about it. But that’s only half of it, because once it’s written, I have to either agree or disagree with it. Yes, but based on what? By virtue of whose authority? Who died and left you in charge, Bob? 

This whole question of “authority” is a big one, and I probably haven’t discussed it enough. Out of 4,000+ posts, probably fewer than five have been on this subject. I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER!

There is no manager. No one's in charge. Obviously, because the post got away from me. Encasing, all-embracing wreath of repose engulfs all the senses, imposing, unclosing thoughts that compose... or tried to compose, anyway. Next time I'll light a candle to the Great Spirit of Blogging.

Musical consolation. Best I can do:

I Want to Speak to the Manager!

I don’t always disagree with Schuon, but when I do, Dupree asks me what I’ve been smoking and if he can buy some pot from me.  

I exaggerate. Let’s just say Dupree has never paid retail for pot.

But I do hesitate to disagree with Schuon, since he seems to have a source he doesn’t tell us about. A kind of Intrinsic Authority, if you will. Of course, every cult leader comes off as an unquestioned authority, and sends out a vibe to vertical cronies such as myself to Back off man, I’m a Shaykh, or Einstein of Consciousness, or 11th Degree Peltmaster.

That Schuon was a cult leader is neither here nor there. Rather, the question always and everywhere comes down to what is true, for there are good cults and bad cults. 

Jesus was a cult leader too, and indeed, every big-box religion starts out as a cult with a single person at the center, from Abraham to Moses and everyone in between, e.g.,  Gautama Buddha, Lao Tse, Mohammad, Martin Luther, Phineas Quimby, Clarence 13X, The Báb, Sai Baba, Bob Dobbs, et al.

I just now remembered a book I read back in the day, that day being in the late 1990s, called The Book of Enlightened Masters. The title is only quasi-ironic; as I recall, the author goes back and forth between a gentle skepticism and a freewheeling, indulgent benefit-of-the-doubt, vertical libertarianism.

And why not? Just because we don’t know, it doesn’t mean someone else might not know, especially when that someone speaks with such charismatic authority!

This may sound a bit odd, but I often extend this indulgent attitude to myself. How to explain it… 

Hold on a sec -- did this insolent Gagdad person just call me a cult leader? Ouch!

As to my own Intrinsic Authority, it’s like this: when I (The B'ob) really want to drill down into a primordial subject, -- which is most of the time -- I just begin writing about it, and at some point it’s like what I imagine it must be like for a lead guitarist, say, Derek Trucks, who is my favorite, since he combines so many influences. 

Suddenly the solo begins taking off, as if it has a mind of its own. Did I do that? Yes, but with the cooperation of some x-factor that wasn’t me at all. Come to think of it, pretty much every songwriter I’ve ever admired describes something similar. Is it grandiosity? Or humility? Or megalomodesty, AKA the Ultimate Humblebrag?

Matter of fact, just last night I was reading a book about The Beach Boys. Before trying to write a song (in this case with Randy Bachman), Carl Wilson would light a candle, put his hands together, and say, “Oh Great Spirit of Music, we are together as two souls and we ask for your guidance that we make good music together.” 

Say what you want, it often worked, for example, with the great song Feel Flows, which, as Dupree can tell you, “with its jazzy solos and mystical aura,” is "great stoner music.”

Anyway, more often than not, I don’t know what I think about something until I write about it. But that’s only half of it, because once it’s written, I have to either agree or disagree with it. Yes, but based on what? By virtue of whose authority? Who died and left you in charge, Bob? 

This whole question of “authority” is a big one, and I probably haven’t discussed it enough. Out of 4,000+ posts, probably fewer than five have been on this subject. I WANT TO SPEAK TO THE MANAGER!

There is no manager. No one's in charge. Obviously, because the post got away from me. Encasing, all-embracing wreath of repose engulfs all the senses, imposing, unclosing thoughts that compose... or tried to compose, anyway. Next time I'll light a candle to the Great Spirit of Blogging.

Musical consolation. Best I can do:

The Lèse-Majestiést Man in L.A. County

Continuing with our theme of what God is really like when we get to know him (and vice versa), let’s veer back to that essay by Hans Jonas, A Concept of God After Auschwitz. 

Again, “Auschwitz" is just a synecdoche for the inconceivable suffering that goes on down here. It can even be a bit misleading, because the mere mathematical fact can obscure the existential fact that 6 million is equal to 1, or rather, that 6,000,000 x ∞ is still ∞, each of the 6,000,000 individuals being infinitely precious. 

One of the strangest characteristics of man is that he is a “species” of utterly unique and unrepeatable instances, which would seem to be a contradiction in terms. I, for example, am a human being, but I'm still waiting to meet someone who reminds me of me.

This is a bit of a side point, but the reason for this is our theomorphism. In other words, God is the principle of absolute uniqueness, or Uniqueness as such, and since we are in his image, we participate in this uniqueness. 

Moreover, a trinitarian metaphysic implies that our "reflected uniqueness" must be reflected within the Godhead (i.e., as Son to Father). At any rate, you might say we are “relatively unique” whereas only God is absolutely unique. 

We human beings are relative to each other, but ultimately to God. It is why the people who detach themselves from the Principle of Uniqueness tend to become such horizontal clones of each other, i.e., statistics, conformists, sheep, lemmings, the swarming anthill of NPCs. There are even Aphorisms for this:

For God there are only individuals.

Inversely, for the left there are only statistics, races, sexual preferences, etc. Or just say Identity Politics.

Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance.

The two poles are individual and God; the two antagonists are God and man.

As in mankind enclosed in progressive ideology. There is a circularity at work here, in that progressive ideology is indeed a sufficient explanation for the idiot who adopts it: feminism explain feminists, as queer theory explains queers and CRT explains the low IQ racists who are stupid enough to believe it.

Only for God are we irreplaceable.

That is indeed a bold statement, for it is easy enough for any intelligent person with sufficient curiosity to believe in God, but another thing to imagine he cares about us, of all people. 

Let’s try to rein Bob in and refocus on the essay. In it, Jonas sketches out his own myth of God and creation. I won’t say it’s as unhinged as my own huge mythunderstanding presented on pp. 6-17 of the bOOk. Still, my meta-myth is a kind of parallel looniverse to his, but let’s start with Jonas's and comment on it as we go along:

In the beginning, for unknowable reasons, the ground of being, or the Divine, chose to give itself over to the chance and risk and endless variety of becoming. And wholly so...

Several things can be said about this: first, that the beginning is always now, as in the vertical principles that uphold the cosmos in every moment (AKA continuous creation). Second, I’m not so sure the reasons are entirely unknowable, in the sense that, What does a Creator do all deity? Hmm. I know: create! 

You are correct, sir: creators gonna create. Perhaps we can best understand this with recourse to our own creativity, which is at once inexhaustible and a bit compulsive or addictive, so to speak. Not to attribute these latter to God, but if man can’t help himself from ceaseless creativity, what must God be like? He must toss out universes as readily as we do greeting cards and sitcoms.

Come to think of it… nah, never mind. Two words: Divine Sitcomedy. Unless its a Theodrama, in which case you deicide.  

Third, that word “becoming” can be a bit of a snare if we’re not careful. We love Whitehead, but we are not Whiteheadians, i.e., process philosophers in the literal sense. 

Rather, while being and becoming are always seen together -- i.e., they are complementary -- becoming must nevertheless be anchored in, or subordinate to, being. If not, then there is no avoiding a descent into the pantheistic absurdity of an “evolving God.” 

If we're going to talk about “change” in the Godhead -- and we are -- then we have to proceed very cautiously and respect the metaphysical guardrails. We’re not new age vulgarians. 

Back to Jonas’s whale of a myth: in giving itself over to creation and becoming, and

entering into the adventure of space and time, the deity held back nothing of itself: no uncommitted or unimpaired* part remained to direct, correct, and ultimately guarantee the devious working-out of its destiny in creation (*I frankly don't understand his use of that word).

A few comments. First, Jonas comes close here to the Christian concept of divine kenosis, which, in the words of Prof. Wiki, refers to "the 'self-emptying' of Jesus. The word is used in Philippians 2:7: '[Jesus] made himself nothing,’ or '[he] emptied himself.’”

There are more or less extreme versions of this, and I prefer the more extreme -- for example, the idea that this principle of kenosis extends all the way up and in, to the Father’s kenosis in engendering the Son, and the kenosis of Father and Son in breathing forth the Holy Spirit, or something. The point is, there’s a whole lotta kenosis going on up there.

We shall continue tomorrow. As usual, I never know the point at which I am overtaxing the reader. Just because I enjoy emptying my head, it doesn't imply that you should enjoy filling yours with my kenotic verbiage.

The Lèse-Majestiést Man in L.A. County

Continuing with our theme of what God is really like when we get to know him (and vice versa), let’s veer back to that essay by Hans Jonas, A Concept of God After Auschwitz. 

Again, “Auschwitz" is just a synecdoche for the inconceivable suffering that goes on down here. It can even be a bit misleading, because the mere mathematical fact can obscure the existential fact that 6 million is equal to 1, or rather, that 6,000,000 x ∞ is still ∞, each of the 6,000,000 individuals being infinitely precious. 

One of the strangest characteristics of man is that he is a “species” of utterly unique and unrepeatable instances, which would seem to be a contradiction in terms. I, for example, am a human being, but I'm still waiting to meet someone who reminds me of me.

This is a bit of a side point, but the reason for this is our theomorphism. In other words, God is the principle of absolute uniqueness, or Uniqueness as such, and since we are in his image, we participate in this uniqueness. 

Moreover, a trinitarian metaphysic implies that our "reflected uniqueness" must be reflected within the Godhead (i.e., as Son to Father). At any rate, you might say we are “relatively unique” whereas only God is absolutely unique. 

We human beings are relative to each other, but ultimately to God. It is why the people who detach themselves from the Principle of Uniqueness tend to become such horizontal clones of each other, i.e., statistics, conformists, sheep, lemmings, the swarming anthill of NPCs. There are even Aphorisms for this:

For God there are only individuals.

Inversely, for the left there are only statistics, races, sexual preferences, etc. Or just say Identity Politics.

Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance.

The two poles are individual and God; the two antagonists are God and man.

As in mankind enclosed in progressive ideology. There is a circularity at work here, in that progressive ideology is indeed a sufficient explanation for the idiot who adopts it: feminism explain feminists, as queer theory explains queers and CRT explains the low IQ racists who are stupid enough to believe it.

Only for God are we irreplaceable.

That is indeed a bold statement, for it is easy enough for any intelligent person with sufficient curiosity to believe in God, but another thing to imagine he cares about us, of all people. 

Let’s try to rein Bob in and refocus on the essay. In it, Jonas sketches out his own myth of God and creation. I won’t say it’s as unhinged as my own huge mythunderstanding presented on pp. 6-17 of the bOOk. Still, my meta-myth is a kind of parallel looniverse to his, but let’s start with Jonas's and comment on it as we go along:

In the beginning, for unknowable reasons, the ground of being, or the Divine, chose to give itself over to the chance and risk and endless variety of becoming. And wholly so...

Several things can be said about this: first, that the beginning is always now, as in the vertical principles that uphold the cosmos in every moment (AKA continuous creation). Second, I’m not so sure the reasons are entirely unknowable, in the sense that, What does a Creator do all deity? Hmm. I know: create! 

You are correct, sir: creators gonna create. Perhaps we can best understand this with recourse to our own creativity, which is at once inexhaustible and a bit compulsive or addictive, so to speak. Not to attribute these latter to God, but if man can’t help himself from ceaseless creativity, what must God be like? He must toss out universes as readily as we do greeting cards and sitcoms.

Come to think of it… nah, never mind. Two words: Divine Sitcomedy. Unless its a Theodrama, in which case you deicide.  

Third, that word “becoming” can be a bit of a snare if we’re not careful. We love Whitehead, but we are not Whiteheadians, i.e., process philosophers in the literal sense. 

Rather, while being and becoming are always seen together -- i.e., they are complementary -- becoming must nevertheless be anchored in, or subordinate to, being. If not, then there is no avoiding a descent into the pantheistic absurdity of an “evolving God.” 

If we're going to talk about “change” in the Godhead -- and we are -- then we have to proceed very cautiously and respect the metaphysical guardrails. We’re not new age vulgarians. 

Back to Jonas’s whale of a myth: in giving itself over to creation and becoming, and

entering into the adventure of space and time, the deity held back nothing of itself: no uncommitted or unimpaired* part remained to direct, correct, and ultimately guarantee the devious working-out of its destiny in creation (*I frankly don't understand his use of that word).

A few comments. First, Jonas comes close here to the Christian concept of divine kenosis, which, in the words of Prof. Wiki, refers to "the 'self-emptying' of Jesus. The word is used in Philippians 2:7: '[Jesus] made himself nothing,’ or '[he] emptied himself.’”

There are more or less extreme versions of this, and I prefer the more extreme -- for example, the idea that this principle of kenosis extends all the way up and in, to the Father’s kenosis in engendering the Son, and the kenosis of Father and Son in breathing forth the Holy Spirit, or something. The point is, there’s a whole lotta kenosis going on up there.

We shall continue tomorrow. As usual, I never know the point at which I am overtaxing the reader. Just because I enjoy emptying my head, it doesn't imply that you should enjoy filling yours with my kenotic verbiage.

Mythoverestimating the Divine Nature

I have this idea that is seemingly unpopular on all sides, but since I am who I am, I can’t can’t help having it, nor do I imagine I could be talked out of it, although I’m always open to a better idea. 

We’ve discussed it in the past -- the conception of God’s limited or qualified omnipotence, but it came up again the other day. It is fully optional, so I don't expect readers to agree with me. No one will be denied burial in Bismarck for thinking Bob has gone off the tracks in his own private railcar.   

Think of it as a vertical exercise in Pick Two:

Pick two, sometimes expressed as pick any two, is the principle that in many sets of three desirable qualities, those qualities will be somewhat mutually exclusive.

In this case the three qualities are Goodness, Intelligibility, and Omnipotence. You might say that if push comes to shove, I prefer a God who is intelligible and unqualifiedly good over one who is all-powerful. 

Moreover, we’re not talking about a total downgrade here, an insult to the divine majesty. Rather, God is still the most powerful being conceivable (and technically beyond-being and therefore beyond conception), limited only by unintelligibility or absurdity (i.e., self-contradiction).

Let me also say that the limitation on omnipotence actually implies the presence of quite positive qualities that could not otherwise exist. 

In particular, I am thinking of God’s ability to relate to us. I’ve heard all the arguments for the simultaneous existence of an unchangeable God and a God who is intimately related to us -- for example who suffers with us and responds to prayer -- but I find them to be tendentious and sophistical. Special pleading, all to preserve what amounts to a platonic conception of God, not necessarily a biblical one.

With my approach, you also avoid the silliness of imagining a God who intervenes, say, to save the life of a professional football player while looking the other way as thousands of less fortunate people are gunned down in Democrat run cities. If God is In Control and God has a Plan and all that, then the plan is not only totally unintelligible, but makes the person trying to sell it come off sounding like an idiot. Not to mention insensitive to the widespread suffering of others.

By the way, this is in no way to deny the existence of the category of the “miraculous,” but this will require a separate discussion that reframes it in the context of the Nature of Things. 

The short answer is the existence is a web of vertical and horizontal influences that is not so much unintelligible as excessively so. As such, we have to accept the fact that it’s complicated, instead of making the complexity go away by suggesting that every child who dies of cancer is just part of God’s plan.

No offense, but some plan. Again, my intention is to preserve God’s goodness while not totally sacrificing intelligibility.

Along these lines, I mentioned that a reader alerted me to an essay by Hans Jonas called The Concept of God after Auschwitz. I read a fair amount about the Holocaust, and every time I do, it is as if I am plunged into a world that is so evil that it is beyond comprehension. There is a limit to what one can truly imagine, such that I can read the words and understand their meaning, and yet, not wrap my mind around how a person could be so sadisically evil, let alone millions of them. 

The Holocaust is far from the only human atrocity that strains to the breaking point the conception of a God who is all-powerful and all-good. The briefest encounter with history reveals horrors that again defy imagination. All part of The Plan? It’s just impossible for me to believe this. But also impossible for me to believe that God doesn't exist, so here we are. 

Nor is this to say there is no plan. Far from it. There is indeed a plan, and the single factor that most interferes with the execution of this plan is called man -- especially me, not to mention you. 

But man is also the being who should act in accord with the plan and actualize it on earth, which places us in an awkward and ambiguous situation, since it is as if the disease is part of the cure, so to speak, or at least has to consent to and participate in it.

Consider a little vertical gedankenexperiment. Suppose the creator of the universe breaks the fourth wall of the historical drama and joins the cast herebelow. This is a mission of mercy that essentially involves saving man from both himself and his closest advisor, a diabolical presence of some sort. But instead of being warmly accepted by all and sundry, he is tortured and executed inside his own creation by his own creatures.

Wo. If this isn’t the strangest story ever told, then surely there could be no stranger. But we need to bear in mind that not only is reality stranger than we suppose, it is stranger than we can suppose, so the strangeness of this narrative is a point in its favor, not to mention other weird elements of the drama that we don’t have time to get into this morning.

Just getting started, so to be continued...

Mythoverestimating the Divine Nature

I have this idea that is seemingly unpopular on all sides, but since I am who I am, I can’t can’t help having it, nor do I imagine I could be talked out of it, although I’m always open to a better idea. 

We’ve discussed it in the past -- the conception of God’s limited or qualified omnipotence, but it came up again the other day. It is fully optional, so I don't expect readers to agree with me. No one will be denied burial in Bismarck for thinking Bob has gone off the tracks in his own private railcar.   

Think of it as a vertical exercise in Pick Two:

Pick two, sometimes expressed as pick any two, is the principle that in many sets of three desirable qualities, those qualities will be somewhat mutually exclusive.

In this case the three qualities are Goodness, Intelligibility, and Omnipotence. You might say that if push comes to shove, I prefer a God who is intelligible and unqualifiedly good over one who is all-powerful. 

Moreover, we’re not talking about a total downgrade here, an insult to the divine majesty. Rather, God is still the most powerful being conceivable (and technically beyond-being and therefore beyond conception), limited only by unintelligibility or absurdity (i.e., self-contradiction).

Let me also say that the limitation on omnipotence actually implies the presence of quite positive qualities that could not otherwise exist. 

In particular, I am thinking of God’s ability to relate to us. I’ve heard all the arguments for the simultaneous existence of an unchangeable God and a God who is intimately related to us -- for example who suffers with us and responds to prayer -- but I find them to be tendentious and sophistical. Special pleading, all to preserve what amounts to a platonic conception of God, not necessarily a biblical one.

With my approach, you also avoid the silliness of imagining a God who intervenes, say, to save the life of a professional football player while looking the other way as thousands of less fortunate people are gunned down in Democrat run cities. If God is In Control and God has a Plan and all that, then the plan is not only totally unintelligible, but makes the person trying to sell it come off sounding like an idiot. Not to mention insensitive to the widespread suffering of others.

By the way, this is in no way to deny the existence of the category of the “miraculous,” but this will require a separate discussion that reframes it in the context of the Nature of Things. 

The short answer is the existence is a web of vertical and horizontal influences that is not so much unintelligible as excessively so. As such, we have to accept the fact that it’s complicated, instead of making the complexity go away by suggesting that every child who dies of cancer is just part of God’s plan.

No offense, but some plan. Again, my intention is to preserve God’s goodness while not totally sacrificing intelligibility.

Along these lines, I mentioned that a reader alerted me to an essay by Hans Jonas called The Concept of God after Auschwitz. I read a fair amount about the Holocaust, and every time I do, it is as if I am plunged into a world that is so evil that it is beyond comprehension. There is a limit to what one can truly imagine, such that I can read the words and understand their meaning, and yet, not wrap my mind around how a person could be so sadisically evil, let alone millions of them. 

The Holocaust is far from the only human atrocity that strains to the breaking point the conception of a God who is all-powerful and all-good. The briefest encounter with history reveals horrors that again defy imagination. All part of The Plan? It’s just impossible for me to believe this. But also impossible for me to believe that God doesn't exist, so here we are. 

Nor is this to say there is no plan. Far from it. There is indeed a plan, and the single factor that most interferes with the execution of this plan is called man -- especially me, not to mention you. 

But man is also the being who should act in accord with the plan and actualize it on earth, which places us in an awkward and ambiguous situation, since it is as if the disease is part of the cure, so to speak, or at least has to consent to and participate in it.

Consider a little vertical gedankenexperiment. Suppose the creator of the universe breaks the fourth wall of the historical drama and joins the cast herebelow. This is a mission of mercy that essentially involves saving man from both himself and his closest advisor, a diabolical presence of some sort. But instead of being warmly accepted by all and sundry, he is tortured and executed inside his own creation by his own creatures.

Wo. If this isn’t the strangest story ever told, then surely there could be no stranger. But we need to bear in mind that not only is reality stranger than we suppose, it is stranger than we can suppose, so the strangeness of this narrative is a point in its favor, not to mention other weird elements of the drama that we don’t have time to get into this morning.

Just getting started, so to be continued...

The Presence of Truth and Truth of Presence

I read an essay this morning about an unrelated subject, but that doesn’t mean we can’t twist it to our ends and put it to good use. The author notes that human beings

are rational animals. And if rational, then logical. And if logical, then it follows that if we accept a certain premise or set of premises, we are logically bound to accept all the conclusions that follow.

This gives rise to a kind of paradox, in that we ought to be rational, unless we begin with an irrational or absurd premise, in which case we ought not be. Rather, spare us. Go back and start over. 

Angels, of course, since they don't have bodies mediating reality, apprehend essences directly and don’t need to reason about them. Nor are they vulnerable to rationalization, even the naughty angels. Rather, these latter are as bold and shameless in their twisted assertions as any gaslighting Democrat politician or journalist (but I repeat myself).

Now, irrespective of whether or not you acknowledge the existence of angels, you will have noticed that some intellects are markedly more angelic than others. Importantly, it doesn’t necessarily make them correct, rather, just angelic. For "Some of us bear a resemblance to the angels,"

but very, very few, a minute fraction of the human race. These few become either great mathematicians (e.g., Isaac Newton), or makers of scientific revolutions (Newton or Einstein), or grandmasters at chess, or (less happily) paranoid schizophrenics who draw logical conclusions from absurd premises (ibid.).

Logical conclusions from absurd premises, AKA Garbage In, Tenure Out.  

An additional layer of paradox or something is introduced by the need to begin with correct premises that cannot be justified by logic per se (see Gödel for details). Which implies that we must possess some power analogous to angels in order to “see” and know where to begin. Am I missing something? Sincere question. Or “sincere” at any rate.

Now, to tie this into the current subject, -- and only subject, come to think of it -- which is the nature of Ultimate Reality, i.e., what is Really Real and how we can know it.

In other words, we want to know the most important and consequential stuff, but we also want to know how it is that we are capable of knowing it. These are distinct but related questions, ultimately going to ontology and epistemology, respectively.

If I go back and forth between using O and God to signify the same reality, it is partly because God is a problematic word to use in thinking about these things. 

For example, if we begin with “God,” this is loaded with conclusions about reality that -- from the perspective of logic -- need to be justified. Otherwise we can be as easily dismissed as one of those "paranoid schizophrenics who draw logical conclusions from absurd premises."

Okay, but what about those angelic intelligences referenced above? For clearly, there are some people who just see or know or feel God directly, with no need for some egghead to explain it to them -- or worse, for some condescending assoul to assure them that God cannot exist and that that they're delusional.

But note the trick: to say that God doesn’t exist is literally an angelic inversion, or the opposite of what an angelic intelligence does. For it pretends to peer into the core of reality and declares with omniscient stupidity, Nothing to see here, move along. 

At any rate, as Señor D. says, Proofs for the existence of God abound for those who do not need them. For these intelligences, proving the existence of God is analogous to proving the existence of sight to one who sees. After all, if we couldn't see, we couldn't even conceive of sight. 

This also reminds me of something Schuon says to the effect that God appears as Truth and/or Presence. These words would seem to imply objective and subjective, respectively. But since these two are not bifurcated in the Godhead, we might say that Truth has its own Presence, and vice versa. For when God is present, we know it is True. And when we truly understand truth -- not such and such a truth but Truth as such -- then we’re in the presence of God. 

About this mysterious presence, the good Señor has a few other juicy ones, for example,

The sole proof of the existence of God is his existence.

bOOm. I’ve written before of how the existence of proof itself proves the existence of God, just as any truth is a testimony of Truth itself. 

God is not an invention, but a finding.

Look what I found!

Especially for the more angelic among us, 

The existence of God is indemonstrable, because with a person the only thing we can do is bump into him.

Put conversely, no one would go around trying to prove the existence of other people if he hadn’t met or seen one -- as if we come into the world as sealed in solipsistic narcissism as an Obama. 

This goes back to the question of where to begin our reasoning. It is perfectly acceptable to begin with Presence. Which is, in the end, true of any and all reasoning about anything. No one begins by proving the existence of logic. It can of course, be perfected, but it’s just part of the standard package installed at the slacktory.  

If God were the conclusion of a rational argument I would feel no need to worship him.

Of course, this doesn't mean we should worship the irrational, as do our hissin’ cousins to the leftavus.

One last zinger:

In certain moments of abundance, God overflows into the world like a spring gushing into the peace of the midday.

Which comes very close to what we were saying the other day about Ekhart, the flow, and the bubbling-over of the divine Ground. I do intend to return to this subject, just as I intend to return to the dozen or so other books sitting here open on my desk. It's just that, uh,