"Aren't You a Christian, Doug?"

1 May, 2006

The first and probably best answer to the question of whether or not I am a Christian is "Not what you would normally call a Christian." This is a term almost impossible to define in a way that I can absolutely insure that we discussing facts and not just debating rhetoric and semantics. In fact, I don't think we can really get to a point where we don't allow our emotions and past histories to color this discussion, but I will do what I can to explain what I mean.

First off, I am not distancing myself from the stereotypically close minded, quick to judge, homophobic, often racist, and generally pro-­govern­ment/­military flavor of people we consider protestants in this country. I do not like these people, as often as not, but its like I would be stupid enough to give up my faith just so people would not get the two of us mixed up. No, if anything, I would do my best to show what a true Christian was and to discredit them, so that I distance myself from them in the correct way, by showing how wrong they are.

Secondly, I am skeptical, but not in the way of "I must have proof or nothing!" because I have spent too much time as a philosopher and a physicist trying to find proof for things that is scant, at best, and is generally unfulfilling in that whole "absolute" sense. No, I believe in the concept of faith, prediction, and application of facts. I was never one that said that God had to come down and tap me on the shoulder before I would believe. I accept that the infinite would be impossible to sum up in finite anythings. There is no number of miracles that would truly capture infinity. This means that some portion of God would always be a matter of faith, or some portion of infinity. Honestly, I believe in infinity. I'll get to this in a moment.

The third point I wish to start with is that I do not do the whole "God must be blamed for this!" sort of thing. I think that God would be all powerful, and if something bad happens it would probably be God's fault. But I do not think that this follows that I will scream at God for not giving me only good things. I base this on a two fold concept. Fold one is I think we have too often tried using post-definitives on God; in other words, we say things like "This is what I think of as love, therefore a loving God must do this." Fold two is based on what I would consider the pragmatic ideal: if there is a God who is all powerful, then I guess that is just tough luck for me if he wants to do something bad to me.

I can accept faith. I do not blame God for things. And I do not think it is fair for Christians to be blamed for the South East United States. Does this mean that I believe in God? Actually, yes. But I belive in a immanent God, one that is reflected in every aspect of existence. It makes no sense for me to contemplate an infinite God that somehow has a large enough hole in his side to stick finite existence. The God that protestants tend to worship is transcedental. I am what you would call a pantheist, but I feel that I am a logical pantheist. I do not think of God being broken up into little bitty bits and then sprinkled into existence. No, I envision a Spinoza like God, who is the very nature of existence.

This was what I meant when I said I believe in infinity. I cannot understand a universe that does not have everlasting as part of it. The notion that a universe could just radically change its laws by coming into existence annoys the crap out of me, partially because it means there is no science there is just hopeful guesses. My mind feels the need for their to be a harmony to the way that things work out. This is infinity would be a "rational" one. It need not think per se, since thinking is an act that is done after the fact. No, this infinity would be in constant contemplation about its immediate and would not need a past, though its past would be contained inside of it, and would have no future, just a series of presents. In a lot of ways, this ties into my idea of free will. This constant, infinite reconfiguring of the present

How about Jesus himself? How about that singular entity that truly defines Christianity? I am afraid I am going to have to say "I don't know" on this one. I believe there was a man named Jesus and I believe he was holy. His philosophies of caring and loving were beautiful. Sure, there were things said and done that could be questionable but I feel that either he was human and could therefore be allowed to make mistakes or was not human and therefore incapable of making mistakes. That which God does is allowed, if God is all powerful. Morality descends out of God, not the other way around.

To me, the most powerful things said are the fact that God will treat us as we treat each other, the way we act becomes an extension into infinity. We are forgiven when we forgive. We get when we give. As we approach the world, God will approach us. I love that. It makes perfect sense to me.

But there are parts of the Christian mythos I am not sure about. For one, Christ talks about the flood, an event that I somewhat have trouble conceiving. That could be just me. Then there are things which are not biblical or are contradicted in the bible, which are such central parts to the mythos. Christ was buried on a friday afternoon and found missing sunday morning, yet we think of his stay as being three days and three nights. Christ is said to have carried his own cross, but the bible clearly says that someone aided him. I am also confused as to how prayer goes from being a simple "God, help me as I help, forgive me as I forgive, I am thankful to you" to this complex system in place where we pray for every little thing. Its like Christians have stopped putting their faith in God...but well, let me get to that.

And there is his admonition that he brings a sword to sever away the old ties that I am unready to accept, for better or worse. I cannot say that I love some child rapist as much as I love my wife or even that I can say that I love Joe Somebody as much as I love my brother Danny. I doubt many Christians can.

I guess I am getting to my final couple of points. The first of which is I consider myself a philosophical Christian, if at all. One who approaches the ideals of Christianity in a philosophical way (not necessarily the Pauline ideals. I am a little concerned at the fact that so many Christians, and even entire church doctrines, allow Paul to trump Christ as far as moral law. When I saw Christian philosophy, I mean specifically the "red letter text"). A way which gives me knowledge and empowers my actions. This is in contrast to A Christian of Miracles, who is more about the power of God and how it can make you better, which brings me to my second and final point. I think most Christians today are more concerned about what they can get out of it than what it is about. They want God to enter into an agreement with them, a business contract, and God is often taken as the supplier of life. This, to me, is something I do not consider myself in the least. I do not want my God to be nothing more than a parent who can do whatever I want, a magic incantation.

Somehow this means I think of the whole thing different than most others. I just do not know what that means.

May 11th, 2006

Yeah, I am thinking that the word to describe me is best summed up as Spinozist (Spinoza-ist?, Spinozan?). I will not be able to go into all the central aspects of his philosophy and God, partly because I am not 100% sure of all the microdetails, but I will go ahead and sum up the basic ones here for you:

1) God is treated as the infinite in the sense of "God is everything" not in the sense of "God is everything but this..."

2) God is not considered to think as in the way the monotheistic Gods look at it. God's thoughts would not be constantly playing catch up with the universe. God's thoughts would either be generating the universe or God's thoughts would be the infinite subset of all possibilities inherent in the universe.

3) I find that my notion of an "interventionist" God does not fit with the standard American-Protestant. I have trouble thinking of a God who steps in and decides to look at His infinite plan as flawed because some church group does not want to lose their pastor to cancer. God's plans would be inherent from the beginning. I am not making the Liebnizian claim that God is bound to God's laws, I am merely stating that God's infinite intelligence would have decided upon the paths chosen (notice the lack of "best" there, since even though I would hold that God's choice has significance, it is not "best of all possible worlds" in that description implies everyone gets what is best for them when my God-view holds that some people can be "unfairly" punished for whatever ineffable reason.

4) We are a finite thing which never can grasp what it would be to be infinite, and so a lot of our so called religion, which is based around the notion that "be good for a bit and bam!" puts too much emphasis on getting rewarded with ever lasting life when everlasting life makes more sense as an aspect of being already at one with God as long as you are inside God's harmonies.

I guess next time I need to talk a little about prayer and this weird notion of rewards we seem to have in Christianity.

May 17th, 2006

Ok, so I am going to skip the questions I have about prayer and address something else: Materialistic Psychology. It is convenient and even makes sense to boil psychology down to merely material thought. I cannot really see anything else it was rationally be, outside the concept of the soul, so I understand. But it does not sit well with me, and this is one of the reasons why I am not an atheist, either.

By the way, if you see me get something wrong, you can e-mail me at wyrmis@hotmail.com. I would prefer to know my mistakes, so I won't be offended.

The problem I have with it is the quiet assumption that, given a materialistic pattern, a rational thought would proceed. By this I mean that 1 + 1 = 2 is not only a logical solution, but a material one in that any time someone thinks of "1" being added to "1", the phsycial interactions of the brain must come to the brain thinking of "2".

I know the neural state theory, that says that thoughts are relative states of neural activity based on patterns of "mental weight". With this idea, it becomes an aspect of shifting of more or less equal energies to different potentials and creating probable outcomes that become reinforced. With this idea in mind, the times that we think of "2" to the stimulus "1+1", we are somehow rewarded, producing an increased tendency to arrive at "2". But how is it that any sort of recognition of the concept "2" necessarily produces the construct "2" as both a visual, mathematical and psychological response? Its not as simple as saying that "The input becomes '2' to us." because we also understand the role of "2" in "20" and in "12". No, it seems way more complicated.

We are left with this hodge podge of notions that somehow the brain is a subsect of physical reality with the concept of a choice inherent. But if the brain has a choice, why not other bits of reality. Why can't a baseball, struck by a bat, "choose" which way it can go? And don't give me crap about "chaos theory", because chaos theory technically maintains that though the miniscule factors governing are two complex to be enumerated, they lead to an inevitable conclusion. And if its quantum mechanics at play, what causes them to degrade out of probability states into actuality? Parallel universes where every possible thought is thought? The brain is complex, but no more quantum complex that any equally dense collection of electrically active matter. The center of a star should even be more technically complex.

Just to restate the base of my questions, so that the issue doesn't get clouded: how is it that we assume that there is a materialistic coincidence where the physical actions leading to thought match the concept of rational thought and especially match precisely the physical reality our mind is within?

I hope people get what I am getting at. I have mentioned it to others and they couldn't understand the concept.