We ask this question because we consider God to be like ourselves. We can lift some things but not others. God is omnipotent. Does that mean God can lift everything?

Lifting requires a subject and an object. It implies the existence of two things: the subject doing the lifting and the object receiving the lifting. An object like a stone will only lift after forming a relationship with a subject. Until the object is subjected to some other force, it remains in its current state.

Lifting — like action generally — adds characteristics to the object at the expense of the subject. I expend energy in order to add velocity and altitude to the boulder. The first law of thermodynamics tells us the work outputted never exceeds the work inputted. So if the object of input and output are one and the same it is impossible to accomplish anything. I cannot move myself. Lifting — like all action — requires distinction between subject and object.

At first it may appear otherwise — I can lift myself in the air with a handstand. But this ignores the other forces at play. A handstand works on the ground because I can push against the earth. But throw me out of a plane: my handstands no longer have any effect. I can only perform a handstand when a platform is under me. In reality, the object of my handstand is the earth itself. I do not lift up myself; I push down the earth.

So the question, “can God create an unmovable object?” assumes that God can create something beyond himself. Is this a wise assumption?

Saint Anselm described God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived. He used this idea to prove God’s existence in reality. To do so, he assumes attributes can only add to existence. So existing with attributes A and B is greater than existing with attribute A alone. If we consider God to have all the attributes that we imagine, then we can also conceive of God having those attributes and in addition the attribute of existence in reality.

Spinoza and Leibniz built upon this framework to show that God must be part of everything. If we can conceive of God having the particular set of attributes that allows him to create an unmovable object, we can also conceive of him having the attribute where he is part of the unmovable object in addition. Therefore, God includes the unmovable object — and everything else. God is everything and everything is God.

Who wonders whether he is a better lover than God? This assumes love is possible outside the presence of God. The reality is that it is only through God’s graces that love is even possible in the first place. The question makes no sense. No one asks this question.

The unmovable rock makes no more sense. The idea of a rock — movable or unmovable — existing outside of God contradicts the very meaning of the word God. Asking whether God can move himself assumes there is a place outside of God to which he can move. This is no less a contradiction. So asking whether God can create an unmovable rock makes no more sense than asking whether God can create a square circle or a colorless blue.

I have an interesting question for the author of the Human Action Study Guide: Can a God who is all knowing nonetheless act?

We should accept that these types of events will, on occasion, in our society, transpire. Trying to find excuses for the nature of humanity — video games, violent movies, poor air quality, whatever — applies but only tangentially. The truth is that they occur because we live in a society that purposefully allows bad behavior and poor decision-making but, paradoxially, never expects truly harmful behavior to happen as a result.

If you want to look for reasons why the Virginia Tech shooting happened, here are three reasons why:

1. We place very little social pressure on people to behave a certain way. We are likely to console the murderer’s family and the school. Were we to arrest or kick the family out of the country, fine the teachers and administrators, and bankrupt the school, someone probably would have raised a larger warning flag and connected the dots. But we believe that collecitve punishment is inappropriate. People generally think the book 1984 is not the kind of place in which they wish to live.
2. We have very rudimentary means for judging someone’s emotional health and rationality. If we had some sort of invisible hand guiding people toward patterns of thought that increased emotional health, there would be far fewer unhappy people — unhappy people willing to shoot up a school. There would also be fewer groups of people who think it is rational to ask a priest to perform an exorcism, leaving more room for more effective psychological treatment. As we do not have this invisible hand, we err on the side of caution and treat nearly all forms of thinking as equally healthy and rational. Our failure rate is pretty high when we do otherwise.
3. The most important thing: We do not really think a few people getting shot up is a very big deal. Sure we talk a lot of talk — or at least the 24 hour cable networks do — but at the end of the day, we value our freedoms more than we value the lives of those 50 random people. The 300,000,000 people who were not murdered by some crazy college student place real value on our freedom to say things without having to worry that the thought police are going to come and arrest us. I am sure that we could have made the lives of those 300,000,000 people miserable enough that a depressed lunatic could not have murdered the 50 unfortunate victims at Virgina Tech. Even if you think this is an acceptable tradeoff — something we should do — were this the case, the resulting despair would more than make up for the difference in a higher suicide rate.

Still, if we want to play the blame game take a gander at this:

Below the fold, the Post looks back at Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui’s last year of life, revealing that last summer, Cho’s mother sought help for her son at a local church, where the minister believed he needed deliverance from “demonic power.”

It is absurd that any person living on earth in the 21st century still talks about “deliverance” and “demonic power” in a manner other than jest. The fact that half of this country and the majority of the planet still thinks this way is mind-numbing. The boy’s family, teachers and friends should have been talking with their son, trying to understand why he was so angry, and gotten him some real help — theraputical, medicinal, whatever. Taking him to a preacher and saying a bunch of Hail Mary’s every night is irresponsible.

Have I been reading The God Delusion? Why yes, I have. How is it you can tell?

Previously: defending my belief that God exists, discussing what that means and why Dawkins is intolerant.

Science explains things in a completely different way to the way we personally experience them. The last chapter in Phantoms of the Brain — Do Martians See Red? — addresses this conundrum. Science can explain how we see things — the cells in our eyes that respond to specific frequencies of light that then enter our brain and excite other cells that activate other cells that have stored the concept of red. But this is categorically different to how we actually see red; Science explains everything from bee dancing to color vision the way a deaf person would explain the experience of listening to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

Some people suffer strokes that make them blind. They say they cannot “see” anything. Ask them to put a paper into a slot that is either horizontal or vertical, studies show that a few will succeed every time. These people “see” in one sense of the term, but they damaged enough of their brain to render them incapable of experiencing seeing. These people are visual automatons.

Why do we not do everything in this automaton fashion? Why do we stand resolute, insisting against all evidence: “I exist. I am. Cogito ergo sum“?

Science cannot answer these questions. Science is not interested in these questions. Science simply concludes, “because”. Things exist; we exist; we see red; we love; this is how the world works; end of question; lets stick to answering how does all this work, how did things come to be…

But I am not here just because.

Yes, my body is here because of my parent’s DNA, the laws of Physics, the need for life to beget life.

Yes, my mind is here because of the endorphins, electrons and chemicals swirling around my brain and body.

But I am not my body.

I am not mind.

I am me. Myself.

My soul.

No one can take this away from me. No one can give this to me. It is completely personal. I created it for myself. It is made by me, for me, of me. Simply,

me.

Buy it. Read it. Now!

Contact. Speaker for the Dead / Xenocide. The Sparrow. Why do all the best stories about extraterrestrials tackle the metaphysical and theological (counterpoint: Spielberg)?

Our deep yearning to know, to discover, to make contact is, at heart, our desire to learn about ourselves. We yearn to understand our soul–to learn who we are. To meet God.

Of course, no one would ever actually go for this. Saving face and acting weird are both deeply drilled into our DNA (but so is homicide).

Don’t read more of this entry. Just read the previous entry. I’m warning you! Well fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you:

My discovery of God has been a continual process since Freshman year of College. My studies of economics, libertarianism, quantum mechanics and most of all philosophy incinerated any ability I once had to reject the existence of something larger than myself. The amazing thing is how your mind grapples and grapples with a problem, creating more and more variations of the same theme. Then one day your mind cracks, and suddenly you can see through the black wall you had been encased in. You swim through and enter a new world filled with light, expanding until all the light has dispersed leaving with a new black wall to break through.

I do not think I am in danger of being overwhelmed by God (not that I would be in the right mind set to say so if I was). I also would say I am more within God than connected to him. None of this really matters though. I don’t really think God matters, but part of the greatness of mankind is having the luxury to divulge into things that don’t matter and figuring out ways that they do. Abstract Algebra is my classic (and oft cited) example of this: it was created specifically because a guy was annoyed that everyone wanted to know how to “apply this to the real world”. So he created something entirely constructed from theory and without any real world analogies. Hoping to keep students from being interested in how knowledge of this applies to the real world, it is now fundamental to new developments in every branch of science, engineering, economics…

I was very happy with my tree analogy. It was one of those things that I had never thought before, but made more sense the more I wrote about it–finding words like self-reflection that have meaning that relates both to water and how you should live life. In general I think this aspect of me is something my family is terrible at being able to access. When we are doing well we have intellectual spars, breaking down to passionate yelling at each other when it goes bad. There seems to be little else in the interactions of our family. No one ever listens to one another. I know I–perhaps more than everyone else–have been guilty of this through the years. I have phenomenal “tune out”, selective memory and hearing abilities. That Diana and I do not interact this way is most of the reason I love her so much.

I’ve had these feelings since I started college. It is probably the main thing my college education gave me. The South (where my family is from) seems to have corrupted the meaning of God more than anywhere else in the US. Their experience of this has made my family reject everything God represents because of the evil and demons they have seen it create in men. That I have accepted God makes them fear I might turn into something they have rejected and more generally just confused at how I could have arrived at such a different answer than them.

However, there is nothing incompatible in our beliefs. My family has seen that the God people worship is fake and rightly chosen to close their mind to him. I have done the same–I doubt I will ever find any use for church, the bible, prayer, throwing 5 yen coins into a can or anything like that–but I did not have to close my mind off to all things religious. Luckily they had already done that. I was in no danger of looking at God and seeing a version distorted by the lenses business cartels like Christianity, Buddhism and the like place over Him. Instead I opened my eyes and saw merely light–millions, billions, trillions of lights. I see one in every person, rock, nook, cranny and tear. Instead of trying to build a new lens of lies to understand Him–thereby distorting God for the empowerment of a few rich men and enslaving the rest of humanity–I saw God for what He is.

In a universe that should be darker than the blackest night, vaster than the largest ocean, our world is teeming with light. It is bursting with life, activity and information moving from one thing to the next. That is God. He is not the one who makes thunder, or the guardian of heaven, or someone who cares whether you abort your baby. God has no point, no meaning, no motive or interests. He doesn’t tell us what to do or help us along. He is simply there. That alone is pretty amazing.

I was going to ramble on more, but I started clipping my nails, which interrupted my thought process.

The only other meaningful thing I have to say is that (for those of you who know me) the vast majority of assumptions you have about me are not suddenly different and I’ll be sending my kids off to prayer every Thursday–or Sunday, whatever. Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton and Aristotle have done far more to help mankind understand what God is than any Pope, priest, monk or rabbi every will. Dogmatic devotion to the Koran or the “Ten Commandments” will as likely create the Crusades or Joan of Arc as Mother Theresa. And looking at the numbers, I see a lot more Crusaders than Mother Theresa.

2. What would it take for you to die happy? While scarry, I would die happy now. Every moment of my existence is a miraculous, logic-defying assertion of God’s beauty and wonder. I stand amazed, proud and satisfied with everything God has given me the gift of experiencing. Each moment of my existence compounds the awe of last, and will continue doing so until the time for me to pass on arrives.

3. Do you prefer old fashioned, comfortable and reliable or new, challenging and exciting?
A person needs a sturdy base of things they can count on to root themselves through the sands of time. From this implanted strength, one can develop a trunk of interesting things, people and activities that inspire one to shoot off in new directions of thought, feeling and experience. Once these leaves have soaked in enough energy from the light of life, they will bear the enlightened gems of fruit whose flesh can feed and nourish the souls of other men, leading them to do the same.

But one must be careful not to be overindulgent and insulate himself from extravagance with a consistent stream of self reflection and hubris, less his well of meaningful existence dry up, leaving him peppered with dots of hate, regret and self-loathing. One can also help avoid turning into such a hard, dry, crusty soul by fertilizing your base with the fruits of others’ knowledge and experience. By doing this one can expect to lead a full-bodied, well-rounded and richly-coloured life.

My initial answer was highly negative. I have a strong reaction to the word “old fashioned”. Who but a depressed and powerless person would wish to live life how they imagine the past to be rather than how they life it today. Those who aren’t depressed would either feel comfortable with the way life is now or excited about the challenge of making that way. Those who are depressed could only feel that way because they feel unable to make it that way.

4. Who is smarter men or women? Given that some of the stupidest people I know spend most of their lives hating people for “being such idiots,” I do not feel qualified to make a judgement on such a question. I also know that some of the smartest people I know life their lives in deep misery, or fail to live up to their potential. What is smart? Someone who: buttresses your opinions? Lives life happily? Earns lots of money? Gathers a following? How about this: how do you define smart?

5. Do you want kids? (would you have kids if you did it all over again?) Yes, as one is biologically wont to do.

6. What part of your life would you relive differently? There is nothing glaringly obvious. I wish I wasn’t so lazy in College. I wish I was a less self-centered person when I was younger. Oh! I would have majored in Psychology.

7. What is the most satisfying thing you’ve ever done? Discovering God. Or perhaps later when His loving embrace began to touch and warm the marrow of my soul.

8. What do you most fear? Sinking back into depression and hating the world again.

9. What person you know personally do you most admire? I admire Kenny and Katie Askew (Diana’s parents) for providing me an example of a healthy, long-term, loving relationship.

Talking with Adam is interesting. I have no ability to connect with Kieran. I think its because his soul is soiled, tainted, but the polite (correct?) way to say would be that we are too different. We view the world through far different prisms. Adam is a different story. We have similar visions of who we are, what the world is to us, yet the way we express our ideas is far different from each other. We don’t mesh and so we say a lot of good ideas, but we can’t hear the other’s idea. You know when an idea hits home. It is like you can see their brain lighting up like a pachinko machine. The idea passes from my mouth and enters the system of pins of his brain. It bounces off the pins, setting of a buzz and whirring of new thought.

We exchanged a couple pachinko balls. One was about the idea of perception. Most of us are too immature to view the world as more than oneself. Somewhere in the back of our heads we think–maybe–everything is just one big creation for us. Erick doesn’t really exist, he is just a figment of your imagination that you used to create this so you can read it. This idea sits in the back of your mind. You don’t exactly accept it, but you can never defeat it. Because of this then it is very hard to communicate with other people. Talk, sure, but then you never really say anything. You are just two peacocks, saying stuff that you think makes the other person cool in your mind just as a peacock will ruff its feathers to impress.

These two pachinko balls hit home. His eyes lit up, fueled by the energy of his fully engaged brain. Processing, the new idea until he consumed it and expanded the giant ball that is his understanding to fit the new ball that had attached to it. He spit out his new conclusions and insights and the ball panged off his brain’s peg: “It’s just like Einstein said, ‘Dumb people gossip. Normal people talk about events, but smart people talk about ideas.’” Then another peg: “It is like that girl over there. I know I’m going to talk to that woman over there, but when you go over and talk to her, they are not the same woman.” It is like Diana said about the great Congress Hall of mini-selves that live inside us, fighting for control of the whole–the greater self. The self of her you create in your mind is different from the one I do.

I said other stuff, but it he did not hear it. He heard the words, but just used them as an opportunity to show me he already knew it. He did not consume the idea I was trying to feed him. However, these two pachinko balls hit home. It made me happy. I want to talk more about these things. Grow together and intertwine our souls until we start to become more like one mind. Diana and I have done this: my intellectually aware self has bonded with Diana’s spiritually aware self. We are now like one mind that experiences the world through two sets of eyes. When we meet and discuss the world, synapses connect and ideas flow quickly, freely through each other like the left and right brain of one person does. With practice, patience and a willingness to listen, to hear, I think I can do this with Adam. I want to do this with Adam–with everyone I am close to.

Unfortunately I fear many people are too involved with their own life. They cannot move beyond a world where they are its only inhabitant. Instead they become arrogant and view oneself as the world’s only champion. Or they reject their own responsibility for enlightenment. They defer to “God.” “God” will enlighten me and show me who I am and what is good. They will never realize that the world is a network of souls, binded together as through rubber bands. They cannot see that this network is God. God will enlighten you because the people you bind to pull you in different directions. The people you band yourself to closest, pulling you the most, is the direction you are most likely to follow. Instead they don’t pay attention to the world around them. They pay attention to where they are, where they are going. Few people bother to watch and see who is pulling them, why and how they pull. Fewer still can see this and change the way they are pulled to move to a better place. Instead they blindly throw money into the pachinko machine, hoping that with enough balls thrown into their heads that one will get lucky and strike gold and enrich them. Instead of choosing their friends’ ideas consciously, they close their minds and entrust their friends who do the same to lead them to good places.

Today I learned from Adam why people do this. I learned what a demon is. “When I was younger, I always thought demon’s were real. But it is in here.” He pointed to his head. Demons are not red men with horns running around with pitch forks. Demons are the cancerous ideas that fill your head. The fears that keep you from enjoying life. The superstitions that help you ruin them. Demons exist because we fail to take responsibility for ourselves. We fail to introspect. We fail to learn who we are and why. We fail to hold our demons in our conscious and fail to reject them when the pachinko ball bounces off our demon pegs. Instead those demon pegs light up and start chain reactions of thought and fear that cascade into our soul, reinforcing their dominance.

I have much to learn from everyone in this world. My grandfather taught me that everyone has something to teach. The biggest fool is the man who assumes he knows everything and dismisses another’s thoughts before they leave his mouth. Such a man cannot learn anything beyond what he has already experienced. He is confined to the place his soul lies. He is helpless to avoid the current of souls as they pull him whichever way they desire. A smart man will listen to everyone. He search for even the smallest man’s ideas and watch attentively as they bounce around the pegs inside his head. One may bounce around and into a new peg, and should he accept this peg he has gained a new tool to manipulate his world with.

If the night had ended here, it would have been excellent. Instead this was just the beginning.

Dawkins sounds like an interesting fellow. I like the idea that we are hairless for sexual and lice reasons. I would love to read a book of his should it fall onto my doorstep at christmas. It all sounds very reasonable and informative except the last bit:

“You’ve called religion a ‘dangerous collective delusion’ and a ‘malignant infection,’ ” I said. “Don’t you think you’re underplaying it a bit?”

Dawkins turned, smiled a small fox smile, and said, “Yes!”

Why should we repeat the mistakes of slavish devotion to Aristotelian philosophy with Darwinism?

Christianity did not begin the scourge of science. However, over the centuries, Aristotelian philosophy was so seemingly powerful and complete in its conclusions that the church adopted them as near gospel. Of course the four elements were fire, earth, air and water. And of course earth is the heaviest, which falls the fastest and thus is at the center of the universe. Only a fool would suggest something besides Earth was at the center of the universe. Just look up at all the stars and sun today: Who revolves around who?

I imagine it was ancient philosophers like Dawkins who displayed such an intolerance of others’ views (because he was so certain of his own) that instilled the same manner on the church. We always knew the Earth was a sphere (not just Columbus), and over 2,000 years ago we had Greeks proposing a Solar-centric world-view. It was rejected because of the ludicrous distances between the Earth, sun and planets it required. When it finally became apparent that the Church’s conclusions were wrong (and those ludicrous distances true), the church was unable to correct what it had so forcefully asserted.

In my mind, far better to allow religion into science, and leave all theories acceptable to religion. A smart investor diversifies his funds. I see no reason priests shouldn’t as well. Also, scientists shouldn’t be so damn insistent that God does not exist when we do not know the first thing about anything. Anything that answers more whys than it creates is an incomplete answer indeed.