Month: October 2020

Can God create a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it?

Can God create a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it? The question stems from the common knowledge that God is supposed to be all-powerful. Now, exactly what is power? Is it within the functionality of power to create a rock so heavy one can’t lift it? It seems to be like the question of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object: the answer is that neither an irresistible force nor an immovable object can exist (or at least only one of the two may exist); it’s only in man’s imagination that such absolutisms are construed to be consistent with nature. It’s the convenience of words: they can be used or abused, inflected and combined in any way you want them to, seemingly able to accomplish anything. 

But the question is really not about power, but ability. If god is all-able, why can’t he create the circumstances we call “having a rock so heavy He can’t lift it”? Rather than trying to chalk this up to a physics question—since any amount of weight would be immaterial to God anyway—let’s consider it in the general case of God creating, at time x, a limitation of Himself at time x+n. That is, He creates the rock at time x and then experiences the limitation of not being able to lift it afterwards at a later time x+n. That is an interesting question, for if God is infinitely free, then how could He limit Himself, or even predict Himself, at a future time? And to say nothing of the fact that God may not operate within a framework of linear time anyway, making it ambiguous whether He may have lifted the rock before or after the time at which he decreed that He couldn’t lift it. Or did He both lift it and fail to lift it both before and after the supposed time? 

This sounds like another operation in linguistics: we think that, if God has “unlimited ability,” then He must be able to fulfill the condition of any string of words whatsoever we can come up with that would seem to indicate a state of affairs. If God is infinitely free, or if God operates outside of linear time (notwithstanding the fact that an “operation,” at least as such, is a process and requires the passage of time by definition), then the idea of “creating a rock so heavy that He can’t lift it” seems to be against His nature.

So, the question then becomes, “can God defy God’s own nature?”, as a god that cannot lift a given rock on some specific occasion is, apparently, not all-powerful. Or perhaps more accurately, since this is purely analytical, it’s “can God behave in a way that belies His own nature/definition?” So here we see that what the question hypothesizes is a logical paradox and is equivalent to the question of whether God could create a square circle—although that still leaves open the question of whether the fact that God can’t, for example, create a square circle makes Him not all-powerful. I don’t think it does because, if God is all-powerful, presumably omnipotence is a real thing. A square circle, on the other hand, is merely an absurdity concocted by linguistical combinatorics. (Yes, you could say that the thing in question is whether God’s omni-power is a real thing, but since for the sake of argument we don’t know whether it’s a real thing, and do we know that a square circle isn’t a real possibility, the square circle case therefore does not impinge on the case of omnipotence, at least if you accept my premise that the use of language can be a weaselly son of a bitch.)

That being said, in the many dimensions in which God does His godding, there may exist one very real sense in which He has created a rock He can’t lift—that is, real in the sense that we personally, physically experience it on a daily basis. Imagine that God makes a rock He can’t lift by continually deciding that He can’t lift it, until He decides that He can lift it again! And furthermore, maybe He could decide to make a rock that He can’t decide to be able to lift, until He decides that He can decide that again! Or He could decide to make a rock that He can’t lift until He decides that He can decide that He’s able to decide to lift it again. And so on and so forth. It’s easy to imagine that if He creates enough levels of this He could get lost in it and forget that He has the power! Maybe He could create an experience where He forgets His true self altogether! At least temporarily. Could we possibly call that experience…being a human being?  Indeed, if God is omni-present, then we must, for there can be no part of a human that is ever anything but God.

Evidence and God

Lots of people ask for “evidence” that a creator exists.  “If a creator exists, why didn’t he leave evidence?”, one says.

But to ask for evidence in the form of an anomaly is to ask that the creator provides evidence for himself by creating something that contradicts the truth of what has actually been created.  It seems that such a person requires two contradictory truths in order to verify that a creator exists—for example, a reality that operates in a way that implies that a lifeless statue of the virgin Mary would not emit tears, juxtaposed to said statue having tears.  Or a world with physics that would be violated by a great booming voice coming from the heavens, vis a vis said voice manifesting.  Or the abstract idealization of a human form, divorced from the physical truth of what engenders a human form, and presented in some way thus contradictory to the truth of being a human, such as an angel in the form of a flying translucent human with wings, or a bright shining Jesus descending from the sky.

In any case, any asking for an anomaly to evidence a creator is asking for a hierarchy of truths, in order of ubiquity, in which one of these truths contradicts another one of these truths, or is at least asking for a cogent system of truth (such as natural process) followed by an unaccountable fact, particularly a fact in the form of a synthesis of two or more human abstracts, manifested physically, that is a strikingly unnatural or irrational synthesis; for example: “ceaseless” + ”burning” + ”a bush”; ”a voice” + ”having no source”; “a person rises” + ”he’d been dead for three days”; or “a statue” (i.e. “a human” + “artificial”) + “weeping.” I’m highlighting the fact these concepts are ultimately syntheses of human abstractions because they’re unrealistic, and unrealistic things can only be human abstractions.

Perhaps for some, the only thing inspiring or mysterious enough to suggest a creator is the irrational. That’s not to suggest that everything else in reality is rationally explainable—I would disagree with such a worldview—but that evidence of a creator must contradict reason. If everything that already exists is already evidence of God, then I don’t see that a creator would have an obligation to—nor a natural tendency to—leave further evidence that contradicts this evidence. That of course leaves open the question of whether everything that exists is evidence, but just as there is no reason to assume that it is evidence, there is no reason to assume that it is not evidence.

Perhaps those who would require the irrational as evidence of God are simply looking for something new.  We have a tendency of “taking for granted” anything we are very familiar with. We don’t have to remotely understand it, it may even be a wonderful thing, but as long as we have familiarity with it, it’s just “a part of reality,” or even when it’s new, it’s just a part of reality in that it doesn’t blatantly contradict something else in reality, so regardless of the mystery or the glory of many arguably sublime things, such as, say, love, it’s not evidence of a creator because it’s just a part of life. Admittedly, the issue of the implicatory relationships between the concept of a creator and the concept of—for example—love, is analytically endless, but a concept of a creator that requires evidence that contradicts natural law is a wrong characterization of God, and it’s hard to imagine what could exist in real life that is a more potent indicator than some of the things that already exists that is not contradictory to natural law.

Any evidence for Christian creationism would contradict natural law.

Some examples of potent indicators of a creator in normal life include existence, life/consciousness, love, compassion, laughter, joy, happiness, art, creativity, peace, order, psi, rainbows, and the general beauty of nature. (I am not saying these examples do necessarily prove the existence of God or a creator, but that that they’re the most potent possible indicators that could exist outside of that which would contradict natural law, and they actually do exist.)

Some things that, if actually deeply and properly understood, would necessarily entail or lead one to more awareness of the spiritual and metaphysical (including God) are these: art; aesthetics; the beauty of the human form and other animals; body language; what makes us laugh; personalities; quantum randomness; and words/language. (The mechanics of how words come into being and become popular, i.e. memetics, operate over the full spectrum of consciousness and awareness, including that which is only subconsciously realized, and that extends well beyond the consciously acknowledged and even the rational. I wrote more about this here: https://exalumen.blog/2017/02/16/on-the-meanings-of-words/)

Attempts to fully explain any the above things without appealing to anything spiritual are attempts to “explain them away,” as such. “How gibbering man becomes, when he is really clever, and thinks he is giving the ultimate and final description of the universe!  Can’t he see that he is merely describing himself, and that the self he is describing is merely one of the more dead and dreary states that man can exist in?” -D. H. Lawrence.

Conclusion: In this particular case—the case of the existence of God—the lack of evidence (or supposed lack of evidence) is not evidence of lack.

All of the above is just an idea I had that I’m sharing for what it’s worth, though. To be fair, if material reality is a “lower” grade of existence, then perhaps, once In a while, for the good of everything, some of the “higher” grade of existence can “leak in” and cause what we call “a miracle.” (Related: https://exalumen.blog/2017/02/15/on-the-term-supernatural/.) I do believe, for example, that medical miracles have occurred and there is documentation to prove it. I don’t know if they imply that God “intervenes,” per se; maybe they only evince the power of creation we have in each of us.

9/11 = 9-1-1

Unless you’re relatively lucky and you live in a personal bubble, you’ve undoubtably noticed that the world is, by and large, a pretty shitty place. Unspeakably bad things happen to people (and animals) all the time, and seemingly at least half the time it’s at the hands of other people.

The typical reaction to this seems to be to think of the perpetrators of these crimes as being “evil” people, with some being more evil than others on a kind of broad scale of evil. Evil (whatever that is), with all the disgust and condemnation it occasions, is thought to fully and singlehandedly account for those people’s actions.

But the truth of the matter is that everyone is ultimately innocent. Whatever evil we commit or become, there are reasons for it. It’s cause and effect. And we’re all ultimately one being. This is why love exists—we see ourselves in others, the divine spark, and we realize, probably on a liminal level, that their pain is our pain, and their joy is our joy. All of us being ultimately one being means that the so-called evil person is you, doing exactly what you would do if you lived in their shoes in every respect, with the possible exception of totally random decisions.

(Here are some essays of mine expounding more on the concept that everybody is ultimately innocent:
https://exalumen.blog/2017/02/05/is-hatred-ever-truly-justified/
https://exalumen.blog/2018/08/31/non-negativity/
https://exalumen.blog/2020/10/14/why-racism-sexism-anti-semitism-etc-are-fundamentally-irrational/)

To be fair, it may be spiritually healthy and appropriate to regard at least some things as evil (In Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch, God says that, although evil is wholly in the eye of the beholder, to see nothing as evil would be the greatest evil of all), but that regarding doesn’t have to come with disdain and condemnation—just caution and reservation.

Anyway, the fact that there are reasons people become or do evil, and the fact that people inflict damage on each other all the time—sometimes extreme damage, whether psychic or physical, sometimes prolonged or repeated damage, and sometimes during the victim’s delicate formative years—seem to imply that, for the most part, evil is damage that gets passed from person to person in an ongoing cycle. Sometimes one or more individuals make someone evil, sometimes it’s the pathologies of the society they live in, sometimes it’s genetic, and seemingly sometimes it’s none of the above—but in those times it’s probably the case that they carried their evil with them from a past life or lives, and that evil was the result of some affliction at that earlier time.

I read once that “all attack is a call for help,” and sometime later I realized it was no coincidence that the attacks on the world trade center and the pentagon were done on 9/11, viz. 9-1-1.

The point I’m getting at here is that, for those who are relatively unafflicted, evil, mentally ill, just plain weird, or even homeless people are regarded with disgust and reflexively retracted from and avoided, since wholly accepting their existence would be too disturbing and puncturing to one’s limited (and fragile) worldview, and sometimes they’re bullied or retaliated against—including via the legal justice system.

It seems it would be more beneficial if we saw humankind (or actually, all beings) as one large organism, and accepted the darkness, the pain, the ugliness and the scary distortions of those we would normally reflexively antagonize.         

Those who are themselves deeply hurt often, or usually, have a greater appreciation for and compassion for the plights of others; those who are weird have a greater acceptance of others who are weird; those who are homeless are more friendly with other homeless people; etc.; and those who aren’t thusly afflicted usually don’t even know that it would behoove everybody if they were to broaden their horizons, so it would seem that lashing out against the ill or otherwise non grata could be considered a form of killing the messenger.

When I see somebody crying, pleading, begging for their punishment for their wrongdoings to stop, dreading the inevitable, I feel compassion for them regardless of what they did, and I can understand through their desire for their own well-being that they deserve well-being and that what’s best for both them and everybody else involved is what’s just.

We have a lot of growing to do as a species, many steps to ascend, many hurdles to overcome on our way to utopia. Utopia may seem impossible because no technology or system of governance or other effort has yet to bring it about, but the fact is that utopia will not and cannot be effected by any government or technology. It can only come with a profound change in culture, such that people no longer act primarily for themselves and are accepting of and compassionate for all kinds of people.

We also must learn to live in harmony with and connected with the nature/the environment for utopia to be possible, but that’s an entirely different subject. 😊

(This has been a complete rewrite of an earlier version of this text, which is a lot more clumsy and awkward, which can be found here if you really want to see it: http://ratemyidea.net/book/rough%20drafts%20&%20notes/911.html)

My Answer to the Quora Question, “Is algebra really necessary for students who don’t want to be mathematicians?”

Of course everyone here is going to answer in the affirmative, that’s just the nature of Quora. The automatic perception of anyone who feels they should always be on the high road is that this entails supporting teaching algebra in schools.

Of course, algebra should be taught in schools, but not as a mandatory subject. Many children just don’t have the minds for it. They hate it, they’re inherently not good at it, it’s mental torture for them, and children really, or at least ideally, shouldn’t be forced to do any kind of grueling mental labor eight hours a day. If they should be forced to do some things, algebra certainly isn’t one of them. Many people rationalize that math can be easy and/or fun for anyone to learn as long as they have a good teacher, but this is simply idealistic. And not to mention it’s also irrelevant if most people who teach math aren’t amazing at it.

If you use algebra currently, great. You’re in the minority. If you like algebra and feel that it has enhanced your life in some way, great. You’re in the minority. And no, you don’t have to algebra math to understand logic or to think rationally. I doubt it even helps; that’s kind of reaching. It would take a special mind for learning how to (e.g.) solve for X to help them become a critical thinker in areas that actually matter to them. And that special mind is probably good at critical thinking already.

And learning algebra certainly isn’t like learning Shakespeare. Shakespeare is full of passion, art and wisdom, math is…wholly, 100% technical and lifeless. And even if it were like learning Shakespeare, it’s fascist to force everyone to learn Shakespeare just because you think it’s virtuous.

With the amount of pressure we put on children to cram their minds full of what we think everyone should learn, our society is kind of fascist, but of course we can’t see that now because a society can never see its own pathologies, except in hindsight. (Okay, I guess that actually depends on which pathology we’re talking about. Sometimes we can see our own folly, particularly when we’re on the brink of transcending it or when the folly only afflicts a certain subset of the population.)

One could make an argument that arithmetic should definitely be taught in schools, because it’s basic to do doing many things that are necessary in society and if people weren’t mandatorily educated in certain subjects like reading, writing and arithmetic then the economy would fall apart. But there’s a line to how much math should be forced on children. Algebra is not necessary to calculate your payment at a store or restaurant, or to do your taxes, or whatever.

There may be some limited uses like calculating mortgage, but those things you actually need in life can be taught more specifically in school, and there are free mortgage calculators on the internet anyway. School should be a lot more about things people actually need in life anyway.

To go back to an earlier point, there are very different types of people in this world, and some of those types just can’t process mathematical concepts very well. It’s cruel to force them to fit a round peg into a square hole. People who aren’t like that don’t really relate and therefore have little empathy for their plight.

And no, someone not being well-suited for mathematics does not mean we need to “exercise that part of their mind, like a muscle” or to complement their weak spots. Just let them be who they are. And in this area, forcing them to pass some tests isn’t going to change them anyway. If it does manage to tighten some mental muscle, it’ll only serve to tighten the specific muscle that allows them to complete the course that they totally didn’t need in the first place.

Another argument people use for teaching algebra and some other subjects in schools is that, if we don’t teach it, mankind will forget how to do it in a few generations. I think this is patently false. There is enough demand for algebra in the world that there will always be classes available for those who choose to learn it, and there will always be people who want to get into such a field to to fuel the demand.

The public education curriculum of today is full of archaism and sickly idealism, and it’s long due for a major overhaul.

I say all this, by the way, as someone who found algebra in junior high to be a breeze, mainly slept through trigonometry in high school and got an A in the class and a 105 on the final exam, got on easy A in Geometry for Educators in community college, and who thinks math is all-around pretty neat.