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Dec. 28th, 2005 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickYesterday's news: Yield curve inverts. CNN Money has the story here.
Also, I played The Bible Game last night. It contains distressingly tiny amounts of actual Bible knowledge and is mostly composed of non-Bible challenge activities. The challenges are video-game-ish and I suck at them (example challenge: Outline blocks on Tower of Babel to make them crumble, kind of a tetris effect.) compared to the computer generated characters. The game show format is remarkable for the sole singular feature I found amusing as (forgive me) hell: The Wrath of God. Think Whammy in Wheel of Fortune, only you get a rain of frogs, a swarm of locusts, masses of flies, and so forth. Playing the game show (called "Do Unto Others") is like being a pharoah, almost. You see a lot of The Wrath of God in this game, to the point where I just started to laugh at the rains of frogs. I mean, they're totally random and there's nothing you can do about them. You didn't deserve them. I can understand dying in DDR if I fuck up enough. I can understand dying in, say, Quake II if I fail to account for the snipers. I can understand getting eaten by the ghosts in Pacman. However, my mental concept of video games does not allow for random fucking rains of frogs. It doesn't make narrative sense. Anyway, given the frequency with which this game employs The Wrath of God, it was clearly designed by someone who'd read his Jonathan Edwards.
Also, I played The Bible Game last night. It contains distressingly tiny amounts of actual Bible knowledge and is mostly composed of non-Bible challenge activities. The challenges are video-game-ish and I suck at them (example challenge: Outline blocks on Tower of Babel to make them crumble, kind of a tetris effect.) compared to the computer generated characters. The game show format is remarkable for the sole singular feature I found amusing as (forgive me) hell: The Wrath of God. Think Whammy in Wheel of Fortune, only you get a rain of frogs, a swarm of locusts, masses of flies, and so forth. Playing the game show (called "Do Unto Others") is like being a pharoah, almost. You see a lot of The Wrath of God in this game, to the point where I just started to laugh at the rains of frogs. I mean, they're totally random and there's nothing you can do about them. You didn't deserve them. I can understand dying in DDR if I fuck up enough. I can understand dying in, say, Quake II if I fail to account for the snipers. I can understand getting eaten by the ghosts in Pacman. However, my mental concept of video games does not allow for random fucking rains of frogs. It doesn't make narrative sense. Anyway, given the frequency with which this game employs The Wrath of God, it was clearly designed by someone who'd read his Jonathan Edwards.
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"What the #*^&$ happened to my free will?"
Date: 2005-12-28 04:08 pm (UTC)That's a whole other kettle of fish, as varying sects and varying interpretations of the Bible will have different standards as to what constitutes "doomed" vs. "saved" -- but that's a discussion for another day. We're talking about Fate v. Free Will* here.
Being an avid SF reader I've never liked the idea of Linear time; I prefer the quantum mechanical view of existence, i.e. life depicted as a series of infinitely branching "A" and "B" choices leading to a number of "C" futures. Using that as a model, I'd like to think that as the One who originally drew the Great Flow Chart, God has knowledge of all possible futures (all the "C" points), but leaves it up to us as to which "A" or "B" choices we make.
Ironically enough, in the end the only "C" point that matters is one that *is* pre-determined for us all: we all die. What happens after that, i.e. whether or not a "D" point exists, is yet another discussion. :)
It's not a perfect model, of course; nothing thought up by a mere mortal is. But I vastly prefer it to the idea of Predestination, which in my view eliminates free will and therefore eliminates real meaning and purpose from the life of the individual.
*[You will recall, of course, the landmark 1997 case in which the SCOTUS decided in favor of Free Will by a 5-4 vote. O'Connor was the swing vote; Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion.]
Re: "What the #*^&$ happened to my free will?"
Date: 2005-12-28 04:47 pm (UTC)Re: "What the #*^&$ happened to my free will?"
Date: 2005-12-28 05:41 pm (UTC)Let me put it this way: in the Catholic tradition in which most of my family was raised, we are taught to pray not for specific things to happen to us ("Oh Lord, please let me get that job I interviewed for last week..."), but for the strength/wisdom/insight to do what is right.
To insert this into my (flawed) model, God looks at the choices before us (points "A" and "B") and then looks ahead on the Great Flow Chart at what the consequences of those choices (one or more points "C") will be. The wisdom that someone prays for would take the form of a insight into that possible point "C" -- not a vision of the future, but some extra brain power enabling one to deduce the results of one's actions more clearly and thus make more informed choices.
Hmmm. I am definitely putting this Flow Chart thing into my novel -- if I ever get around to writing it, that is...