Gott ist tot...

So Deity became empty because of the lack of fullness and emptiness became the fullness of Being, the myriad processes comprising the universe. The fullness is always empty, always reaching and becoming. Randomness and probability fulminated in the advent of stars, comets, planets, and, in some places, life. God is dead and also alive.

Dice Rolling Deity

     I agree with Robert G. Brown when he states in his “The Pandeist Theorem,” that "If God exists, then God is identical to the Universe. That is, the theorem is a statement of conditional pandeism. If God exists at all, God must be absolutely everything that exists.” It is the only theory of God which makes sense to me. God, which I will hereafter refer to as the Deity and will represent that Being which existed prior to the universe (or multiverse if you prefer), is not to be viewed as identical with the Person of the Judeo-Christian paradigm in the sense that this Being was not perfect, did not know all, was not all-powerful, and not even necessarily all “good,” whatever this term means. There is very little, in fact, that one could know about this Being. One thing that can be surmised is that, if it is true that Deity became the universe there must have been some perceived lack within this Being that it was thought only becoming the universe would resolve.

     There are a few theories about this. Of course none can be really true or false since there is no way to test any of them; but the one I favor is that Deity became the universe for the experience. It is the difference between being an observer and being an actor. To truly know and understand something one must become immersed, and, were I powerful enough to do it, it would make sense to make that immersion complete in one spectacular roll of the dice.

    

Notes on Milton

Some notes I jotted down on "Paradise Lost (in italics):"

This reminds me of the Prometheus myth...

Satan a prototype of Camus's absurd hero as well as a metaphor for the human condition.

On line one:  "Of Mans First Disobedience..."

What happy life can exist in a state of unquestioning obedience? What happy life is possible without the consciousness of there being an alternative?

Lines 39-40:  "To set himself in Glory above his Peers,/He trusted to have equal'd the most High"

Struggle toward the heights...a life without struggle and without exertion of individual will is sterile.

"Him the Almighty Power/Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie/With hideous ruine and combustion down/To bottomless perdition." (45-47)

The casting out of heaven a wider metaphor for separation from unified and orderly meaning:  an estrangement by choice from the paternal, the rational, and the deterministic.

"But his doom
 Reserv'd him to more wrath:  for now the thought
 Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
 Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
 That witness'd huge affliction and dismay
 Mixt with obdurate pride and stedfast hate;" (53-58)

From Camus's "The Myth of Sisyphus:"

"Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods,  powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition:  it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn."

"What though the field be lost?
  All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
  And study of revenge, immortal hate,
  And courage never to submit or yield:
  And what is else not to be overcome?
  That Glory never shall his wrath or might
  Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
  With suppliant knee, and deifie his power,
  Who from the terrour of this Arm so late
  Doubted his Empire." (105-114)

From "The Myth of Sisyphus:"

"His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing."

People must scorn their gods, how could they not, viewing as they do the randomness and suffering in the world?

Satan is fully aware of his separateness, fully aware of the hopeless futility of any action at all, yet acts if for no other reason than spite. How like us.

"The mind is its own place, and in it self
  Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
  What matter where, if I be still the same,
  And what I should be, all but less then he
  Whom Thunder hat made greater? Here at least
  We shall be free..." (255-259)

From "The Myth of Sisyphus:"

"That hour like a breathing space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of these moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock."

Sic semper tyrannis

I was moved to pity when I saw how Ghadafi was treated just before he died. I know who he was and what he was guilty of. I know that those who have lived in Libya under his regime have pain and hate and anger that I, who have lived in pampered comfort in the United States, can’t even fathom. I won’t say their feelings that led them to do these things that I’ve witnessed on video were unjustified. I can only say what I felt when I saw Ghadafi’s last moments. I saw a scared, confused, bloodied and bruised human being who had been chased into hiding in a drain pipe apparently begging for mercy. I felt sorry for him.  I don’t know why. He didn’t give pity or mercy to others, but I wished it had been shown to him. I guess I just don't like cruelty no matter who's doing it. That’s all I have to say.

On Russell's Essay "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?"

My thoughts on Bertrand Russell's essay on the contribution of religion to society are, briefly, these:  he takes the position that religion has done little more for society than fix certain calendar dates and predict eclipses. This outright ignoring of the multiple and varied contributions of religion is puzzling considering the depth of Russell's thinking on other subjects and betrays, to my mind, more prejudice than presenting of historically accurate facts.

He can't, for example, have been ignorant of the fact that it was church men who preserved for posterity multiple works of Aristotle, Plato, and by extension Socrates, thus making it possible for the very endeavor of philosophy in the West to persevere to become what it has become, and, ironically, make it possible for men like Russell to question the relevance of religion. Moreover, religious inspiration was and is behind much of the art produced in the West, from the visual medium to cinema. One need only cite examples like Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Botticelli, Kierkegaard, Milton, and Russell himself, for one can hardly criticize what hasn't been an inspiration to one in some way or other.As already alluded to, philosophy itself owes a huge debt to men like Augustine, Aquinas, and Descartes.The very ethical viewpoint of the West owes a debt to Christian thinkers from Christ on down to the present, whatever one may think of the content of that body of thought it is hard to deny that "love thy neighbor as thyself" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" hasn't in some way influenced how people have thought about how to treat others. One need only think of the ethical atmosphere of the Roman Empire before the conversion to see the changes made as a result of the advent of Christianity. So, whatever one's position on the claims made by religions of the world, it is just not accurate to state such a minimal influence on humanity.

What strikes me, also, isn't only what Russell says about the negative effects of religion as compared to the humanistic projects incorporated in scientific and rationalist movements since the Renaissance, but also what he doesn't say. He spends a great amount of time giving examples of the negative effects of religion but says nothing about its positive effects. It may not be earth shattering change, but the hope and sense of ultimate purpose it has given people and indeed continues to give to people, founded or not, is, to my mind worth something. Yes, it is true that the religious impulse has inspired great acts of inhumanity, but it has also inspired acts of charity and a sense of fellow feeling in times of mutual trial. It has inspired acts of love and tolerance as well as acts of war and cruelty. The focusing of Russell on the chasm between religious ideas and religious peoples' acts as a way of showing that religious ideas are somehow empty is fallacious. Ideas should be judged on their own merit and not on how well or ill they are practiced. Russell spends as much time praising reason and science, moreover, as the panacea to all of our social ills, conveniently leaving out the fact that it has been people of reason and science that have been responsible as much as anyone else for war and suffering as these have been the ones responsible for the designing of such weapons as are capable of killing people en masse, devising strategems for waging battles, and for rationalizing motivations for conquest and genocide.

No, I think Russell is wrong about religion and about science and reason. Neither of these are the culprits of human suffering, only the vehicles through which negatively motivated people exert their desires.