(no subject)

[which_chick]

Yesterday'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.

Comments

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

Even after 10 years of being with Abner (an athiest), I'm not sure I really understand how people can not believe in God--to me the existence of God is as obvious as the sun and the moon--but I don't doubt for a moment that people can be good, upstanding, ethical people without that belief.

I can answer that one, or at least answer it a little bit. I was raised by agnostics. (When I was six years old, I apparently asked my parents why we didn't attend church. They told me "Because we're not hypocrites.")

So I was raised to question everything. I had no religious experience whatsoever, other than the experiences one cannot escape in the popular culture of our overly religious nation, until I went to Catholic high school. (The local public school was a disaster area.)

At that point, I was smacked in the head by two thousand years (or, if one includes the pre-Christian traditions, five thousand years) of contradictory theology laid atop ancient magical beliefs. (I'm sorry if this characterization of it bothers some people, but I can't think of a way to make it more palatable without making it incomprehensible.) It took me about a semester to decide I was an atheist.

With more experience, I realized that the questions asked by theists are fundamentally unanswerable. Is there a being, more powerful than we can possibly comprehend, that created the Universe? Heck, how would I know? An alien with ten million years' worth of evolution on us could show up, move the Moon out of its orbit, read everyone's minds with some sort of advanced technology, and declare itself to be God. How would you disprove it? So, the fundamental question of theology: "Is there a god of any kind, be it good or evil or clockwork, in existence?" is unanswerable, except through faith, which appears not to have been installed in my particular version of Human 1.0.

On the question of "Is there a God such as is described in the Bible?" I came to a simpler answer. No. There is no way that the world could be as it is, with villains prospering and the good dying in horrible conditions, if there were a loving and omnipotent father-god. That's the modern definition of atheism in America (y'all dunna believe in Gawd!) so I'm an atheist.

Although, I will say that back in college a friend asked me if there were any thing I would ask a prospective candidate for God, to prove His existence and power. I said, "Make two plus two equal five."

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

I agree with you absolutely that God As Described In The Bible does not exist. I even understand, very well, that God As Described in The Bible is exceptionally unappealing. I wouldn't worship that being.

Abner and I have discussed this extensively and I've come to the conclusion that he sees all the things that to me reveal God (or let's call it the Divine, to get away from that Judaeo-Christian-Islamic thing) in the universe. He even has, as near as the barrier of language rather than direct communication will let us determine, much the same emotional reaction to it (awe, wonder, amazement, occasional giddiness at the sheer fucking *coolness* of the universe). He just doesn't then make the leap to thinking then that there is something Divine in that sheer coolness. Which is cool--it is quite probably something that is either hardwired into an individual's operating system or not. To me the Divine is as obvious as the chair I'm sitting on--but I get that either I'm telling myself fairy stories or you and Abner are missing something I'm seeing. One or the other. :)

I've always joked that what it would take for Abner to believe in God is simultaneous supernovae spelling out "Abner, don't be a shmuck!" across the night sky. He says it doesn't have to be personal like that--but simultaneous supernovae spelling out something intelligible might do it. :)

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

He just doesn't then make the leap to thinking then that there is something Divine in that sheer coolness.

The question that I ask in this case is: How could I see the divine in something that's an integral part of being human?

I've always joked that what it would take for Abner to believe in God is simultaneous supernovae spelling out "Abner, don't be a shmuck!" across the night sky. He says it doesn't have to be personal like that--but simultaneous supernovae spelling out something intelligible might do it. :)

If that happened to me, I would probably spend the rest of my life in a mental institution, trying desperately to convince the psychiatrists - who would presumably have seen the celestial light show and believed in it - that I was mad. How do you determine, to your own satisfaction, if you're sane when you've undergone an immensely improbable experience like that? Heck, the psychiatrists to whom you think you're talking could be hallucinations, too!

Is there such a thing as being too sane? 'Cause I think I may actually be utterly deficient in whatever lets people believe in things. :)

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

The question that I ask in this case is: How could I see the divine in something that's an integral part of being human?

What are you referring to as the integral part of being human here--the coolness of the universe or the ability to see and appreciate it?

I mean the universe would be incredibly cool whether we were here to notice it or not, right?

And I don't actually think everyone is able to see that awesome coolness--I don't think it's necessarily an integral part of being human. Maybe. Hrm. I might need to think about that more.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

The ability to see and experience the coolness is a vast part of our humanity. It may, in fact, ultimately turn out to be what makes us human as opposed to a very dextrous ape.

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

Ah, fair enough. On more reflection, I think I probably agree with you about that. Which means that there are some H. sapiens running around that aren't entirely human.

Like that's a shock.

How many fingers, Winston?

[teflon-tim.livejournal.com]

Make two plus two equal five.

If memory serves me right, O'Brien did that in 1984 -- or at least he did so as far as Winston Smith was concerned. Richard Burton played O'Brien in the movie. Does that make Richard Burton God?

Seriously, though...

I'm not convinced that there is a God. However, I'm not convinced that there isn't one, either. I hold open the possibility of a higher existence because I'd like to think that there's more to life than just the proverbial moment of light and warmth as the sparrow flies in the window and through the house. But you'll need to do a bit better than asking me to "take it on faith." I need more supporting evidence than someone simply saying "God says so," or "It's written in the Book of so-and-so."

I suppose that makes me an agnostic. Or maybe I don't have Faith 1.0 installed in my OS either. :)

Re: How many fingers, Winston?

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

I think I'm a really, really strange sort of theist--because I'm not sure I believe that there's more than this life (though I'd like to believe in reincarnation, I'm not sure I actually on a gut level *do*). We live, we die, we rot (or get eaten--I prefer eaten, personally). Some people try to make that sound insignificant--but really it's not. It's really, actually, quite a lot. Not a little thing at all to live and love and move through the world and appreciate the beauty. I mean there's mystery there and awesomeness, in just one life and then the oblivion of the grave.

But I still believe that there is something Divine in the universe. Like, as Terry Pratchett says, I believe in the postman.

There. Are. Four. Lights! --J.L. Picard (fictitious)

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

But I still believe that there is something Divine in the universe. Like, as Terry Pratchett says, I believe in the postman.

I imagine this is what it's like to be colorblind. I honestly see no evidence of the divine in the Universe. It seems like a great, blind clockwork that's running along at an immense rate of speed across vast, mostly empty distances. While it's awe-inspiring, it's awe-inspiring in the way that the Grand Canyon is. It's huge, and it's beautiful, and it obviously took a lot of time to get there. :)

Re: There. Are. Four. Lights! --J.L. Picard (fictitious)

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

It may be a hardwired difference between us. It may also be the way that each of us was brought up. Your family are agnostics. I was taken for walks in the woods when I was small, and, in fact, to see the Grand Canyon, and we talked about the Divine, my mom and I. Hardly ever went to church, but walked in the woods and felt the mystery a lot.

You may be colorblind, and I may be like Arthur Conan Doyle, seeing fairies where there are none. (Only I don't write as well. :) )

Re: There. Are. Four. Lights! --J.L. Picard (fictitious)

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

I had a family background with strong faith. So I see the divine in a lot of things. Love for one thing.

And again, since I don't understand God, it makes it that much harder to describe him. My understanding is that the original spirit, what became the Holy Spirit, was female in the original versions of the old testament. Until I learn those languages, I won't know for sure, and even then can't. Nobody can. There are no vowels. So open to misinterpretation.

In any case...the old testament is description of something in terms that the people then would understand. It might not hold meaning for a lot of people today. On the other hand, I've read some fairly wretched translations. so I prefer to read as close to an accurate translation as I can to get some idea of what the history of my system of belief is. Not everyone feels the need to do this.

Which is why the Bibles my church hands out to 3rd graders translates "Eunuchs" as "Government Officials".

Re: There. Are. Four. Lights! --J.L. Picard (fictitious)

[sara-merry99.livejournal.com]

The Jewish Publication Society translation of the Hebrew bible (the Old Testament, only in a different order) is about the best translation that modern scholarship has. You might want to look for that one in the Jewish section of the bookstore.

The problem with the Bible, both testaments, is that they are very culturally conditioned--written by and for people in those times, places, and cultures (more than one of them) and with underpinnings, overt and subtle, that we can't really hope to get.

One of the reasons I am a committed Jew is that being Jewish you're allowed to argue with God, to disagree with the tradition, to argue (politely) with other Jews. It's kind of in the "rules" of being Jewish that as long as you continue to be a Jew you can disagree with the faith as much as you want. :)