Impurities (Part 5)

Here we are, mortal humans, impossible biological impurities in the impossible expanse of the impossible universe. I listen to John Lennox and Richard Dawkins, and I realise that Lennox is right — when Dawkins says that the way the universe develops closely imitates something that is designed, it is circular thinking — how can we say even this thought is true or designed if in fact nothing is designed?

We recognize truth only if it corresponds with our ideas of the universe. That is all, and it only eliminates miracles as things that don't correspond. But why would natural selection necessarily value truth or design? The answer is likely that it does not value either truth or design. There is nothing, and so evolution too is an illusion. For natural selection is a blind force — what survives is what survives, it is a circular argument.

Perhaps then all is math, and local impurities in the fabric are what gives us this illusion. And math too then is a series of propositions that are really assembled from finding the best fit in what works. We think it is logical, but we only do so because the brain that evolved thinks it is logical, which itself is also a product of evolution. Ho ho.

In the end, all it boils down to is that God is harder to explain than the universe. But if He weren't, wherefore should He be God?

Gaps in the Clockwork

Perhaps the most infamous idea of how God and Science fit together is the 'God of the Gaps' concept. This is the general idea that whatever Science cannot (yet) explain (a 'gap') is God's due. If the explanatory universe is of constant volume, then God's role thus gets smaller and smaller, or at least, more and more involuted.

But the real gap in all religions is more fascinating. The real gap is the one between 'supernatural' and 'natural'. What is 'supernatural'? And if it is 'supernatural', how then does it interface with the 'natural' without being merely 'natural' itself? I use quotes throughout simply because I don't know what these terms really mean, in relation to each other.

In Christianity, the religion to which about 33% of the human world claims allegiance, God is always involved with His creation. He made it, and bridges the gap between it and Himself by unpredictable intervention and communication. He is able to say, "My ways are not your ways," and yet also, "Come, let us reason together." In Him we live and move and have our being, and yet clearly He is not of our substance. Yet, God became Man and dwelt among us.

How does that work? The authors of the Bible, expressing God's thoughts, point out explicitly that the whole thing defeats philosophy. They don't claim that logic will hold in this realm. In fact, they claim that you can attempt to use reason, but God is not bound by it. Once that happens, all bets are off.

The modern rationalist is repulsed by such things. If such a situation maintains, why bother? If ontology trumps epistemology, and deity trumps deontology, it is a farce.

To me, it is an amusement. Logic is like the screwdriver in the toolbox. It uses circular motion to effect linear progress. But it isn't the only tool, let alone the toolbox itself.

Its existence tells us only a few things about the tool-user: 1) makes tools, 2) has occasional need for screws, 3) is capable of effecting a grip-initiated turning motion... and so on. It's a good, very useful tool, but it doesn't even tell us what the other tools are, although it can replace some of them crudely in certain situations.

Some users treat it more like a Swiss Army knife — a multitool of some sort. But it requires a lunatic bravery to rely on a multitool for all your needs, all your life.

I don't think of a 'God of the Gaps'. I think that what we see of the universe is more wonderful than we can think, and if this is so, not all of it is amenable to thinking. I think the explanatory universe is infinite, and that God in His complexity can bridge 'natural' and 'supernatural' since they are only our feeble labels for 'what would exist without us' and 'what may exist but which we will never be able to describe, explain, predict or control'.

Starbuck

A starbuck is a male deer with a white mark between or just above its eyes. They're generally supposed to be frisky. Me, I have something of the starbuck's with me. Little sachets, which the purist might scoff at, but which are the offspring of the bean anyway.

For we all serve 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine, whether we prefer mermaids or not. And the Columbian Roast, and the Italian Roast, and whatever blends and names describe the bean — these also serve the Atrament, the liquid faith, the alternate benediction. Although some are theobromic, and some are theophyllic, all acknowledge the gift of the Highest.

And I, I have a pot before me. It is full of the atramental essence of the bean. And I, I am happy; I, I am blessed. Makarios. It is my father's birthday today. Happy birthday, Dad!

Humanism, Transhumanism and Posthumanism

Humanity is an organic mass mess mass of 'thinking' machines, each one different from each other one and made so by genetic reproduction and other 'genetic' algorithms. This mass appears to have thoughts about itself; it thinks that it has norms, that it has ideals, and that it can have standard types as well as ideal types. It always thinks it can improve on itself.

The problem is that it has insufficient data to actually come to conclusions about what its norms (other than statistical ones, and these too are its own inventions) ought to be; it can have no legitimate idea as to its ideals, based solely on its own perception of self; and it can have no legitimate idea as to how to improve, not having enough data as to where it can improve towards. This mass, however, has elements which will disagree with such a diagnosis, even though it is obviously true.

Once upon a time, an element of this mass said to me (another element of this mass), "Well, it has to be true that making optimal use of energy would be an improvement." I'm not so sure. What is optimal use? Every such idea, ideal, improvement, boundary, definition, norm (etc, etc) is defined by this imperfect mass. As one element named Russell said some time ago, mathematics — which a fair number of elements think is the best (query: best?) mode of thought (query: thought?) — is built on the flimsiest of foundations. So he decided to be a logician, but his project failed too.

Humanism is a work in progress, then. But progress towards what? And if it is a work in progress, what can be said about trans- and post-humanism, which some elements of the human mass also talk about? They are imaginary work in imaginary progress.

Some human elements point out that evolution occurs, and we have strong evidence for it. Of course it does, and of course we do. But there is nothing to show 'fitness' except the promise that we are putatively 'better adapted' to a changing world. In truth, we are adapted, but we do not know if it is better, or will be so, because the genetic algorithms are future-blind. We are reactive, and hence we should have no claim to trans-anything or post-anything.

In fact, the only think we can know is that we are all headed towards thermodynamic 'heat death', and hence it seems good to try to stave it off. Hence the fixation(s) on information, energy, efficiency and effectiveness. But for what? Nobody seems to know. Some, however, have odd ideas about destiny and optimisation. Those too will pass.

In the end is the singularity, as at the beginning, some others say. The point really is that the singularity is the ideal to which all information (whether it is so, or merely an aberration in the energy transactions of the universe) goes, and once it is, nobody knows.

Is it any wonder that man imagines that he imagines God? Or that man (well, some portion or other of the human mass) imagines, "What is man, that [God is] mindful of him?" In the end, faith, hope and love abide; and if not, there is nothing.

Changing the World

Whatever you do, you change the world. The greater your potential to do so, the more you must change it. The more you can change it, the better it is that you change it for the better. And so it goes.

I don't know exactly when it became a Marvel Comics catchphrase (i.e. 'with great power comes great responsibility'), but it's convenient shorthand to put it that way. The principle, however, is somewhat well-established in law: if you have greater resources, privileges, and powers, you also have a greater duty of care in many cases.

In this case, it must be a greater duty of care with regard to the world around us. But here is where it gets interesting. If the universe was created by a God of unbounded powers, the responsibility must also be unbounded. He can't just delegate authority to humans, because He would still be responsible by virtue of being a higher authority with perfect foresight.

The question is then, to what extent is His responsibility voided by humans deciding to do things that they ought not do? Are we considered competent or incompetent? Does God's responsibility extend to maintaining the universe in a state acceptable to its tenants?

Ah well. It seems that power might be an expensive burden. But torque is cheap.

God and Mammon

There is no supernatural being or mythic deity by the name of Mammon. However, it is the Syriac and Hebraic word for 'riches', and according to some accounts, 'surety' or 'that in which one puts financial trust'.

It strikes me that when we put God and Mammon together as an antagonistic pair, we are also putting a qualitative paradigm and a quantitative one in opposition. God is uncountable, beyond measure, and willing to deal with absolutes; Mammon is that which must be counted, measured and evaluated exactly in order to mean anything to anybody.

When we educate a child so that values are inculcated and that pupil learns to develop those values (within the context of personal limitations and circumstances), it is qualitative development. When we educate a child so that the score on Test 1 is evaluated as a baseline such that the score on Test 2 is seen as 'improvement' or 'decline', that is using a Mammonistic approach — we have put faith in numbers which may not actually reflect the growth of a human being.

Perhaps that is why Christians are told to not conform to the world — it isn't a call to be unworldly, but to be non-conformist: to not easily lend oneself to description by numbers and words, or to not be controlled by the formal rubrics of human society. If everything is numbers, then we shall cast a wary eye over numbers and make sure they are servants and not masters.

That is not to say that science and engineering are of no value. On the contrary, they are supreme in their sphere of producing results that are eminently reproducible. We can have faith in switching on a light or in walking over a bridge. We can use the methods of the quantitative without fear. But we should be very, very careful in using those methods to handle the individuals we teach.

It is a simple argument even for non-theists: since humans are vastly different and very complex, specific means of evaluation and education are likely to have statistically measurable effects, but they are unlikely to have the same effects for each individual. Hence, when we use quantitative manipulations on humans, no single real human is likely to be optimally developed by those manipulations.

Then again, since humans are vastly different and very complex, we have to put our faith in something if we are to imagine that education is of use. And some education, as far as we have been able to see, indeed looks to be of great use.

How then to decide whether Mammon is of any use at all in education? The answer is a simple one: in Luke 16, the righteous are told to make righteous use of unrighteous Mammon — for if one is unable to be trustworthy with quantitative wealth, how can one be trustworthy with that which is more valuable?

And that is why we have to deal with both as honestly as we can, serving God and measuring Mammon — rendering to each its appropriate due.

Ockhamite Monotheism, or Why I Am A Monotheist

In a frequently-read previous post, I established a simple argument for why I am not an atheist given my beliefs. It isn't a new argument, but it's one that is supported by the converse reasoning of Joel Marks.

His side, of course, is that since God doesn't exist, he should be amoral. It is the same argument, but with a different choice — in my previous post, I said that since I would like to believe in morality, at least one god must exist.

To take that idea one step further, I call upon my interlocutors once again. Most of the friendly discussions I've had with the non-religious, agnostic, or atheistic people I know invoke William of Ockham. That worthy's philosophical principle of reductionism, also known as Ockham's Razor, insists that we should not accept plurality where a reduced set is possible, or that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity. It is a principle used by scientists ever since Newton started pretending to be one.

While it is not necessarily axiomatic, consistent application of Ockham's Razor shows better results in most domains. Hence, if one is going to be a theist, then one should be a monotheist, since any system invoking gods is probably best with one God. The only flaw is that human god-systems tend to be unimaginative — they mostly posit contradictory gods and powers (hence the theomachies and titanomachies of mythology) without allowing for a God capable of complex thinking, behaviour and exercise of will. That's because it seems easier to have gods handle separate domains, something like a celestial bureaucracy or equivalent.

Indirectly, this assumes that consistency must be a virtue derived from perfection, with the ultimate consistency being complete homogeneity. An inconsistent God would, by this argument, have to be more than one god.

Such an assumption seems spurious, since a perfect God or a perfect universe would then be a singularity. This in turn would conflict with other concepts of perfection (such as the idea that a being with the property of existence is of a higher order of perfection than one that doesn't exist, non-existence implying imperfection). It would also conflict with the idea that a god must exert powers, since there would be no differential across which to demonstrate any properties whatsoever, let alone powers.

The point really is that no matter what philosophical and theological convolutions we go through, if we want to be theists, it makes most sense to be monotheists. And creative ones at that.

Israel

For some reason tonight I thought of struggles, and in particular, the idea of wrestling, of coming to grips with something.

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."

So says St Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is an interesting image, because in some ways, it leads one's eye away from that other great wrestling match of the Bible, the one found in the 32nd chapter of Genesis:

Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day. Now when He saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him. And He said, “Let Me go, for the day breaks.”

But Jacob said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me!”

So He said to him, “What is your name?”

He said, “Jacob.”

And the Man said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Then Jacob asked, saying, “Tell me Your name, I pray.”

And He said, “Why is it that you ask about My name?” And He blessed him there. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: “For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”

It is possible to contend with God, it seems. And God seems to welcome it. Why else does He allow men like Abraham and Moses to argue with Him all the time? That makes hash of the Greek philosophical argument known as the Euthyphro dilemma for the simple reason that God is not bound to fit any human idea of good, and yet is good. It lowers the philosophical hazard to believe that, than to believe that there isn't a God at all.

I invite people to wrestle with that issue, if they can bring themselves to it. Perhaps they will end up joining hands (figuratively) with the Good Doctor, Thomas Aquinas. Or maybe the other Good Doctor, Isaac Asimov. Heh.

The Big Questions

Yesterday evening, I spent an hour in a teaching session. The session was about why the scientific paradigm is epistemologically supreme in modern society — it is trusted to meet needs reliably and to give a reproducible advantage to its wielders. It was also about the questions that science can and cannot answer, based on what it says about itself.

And so I found myself, last night, reading Psalm 77. The 77th Psalm is one of the psalms of Asaph, a curious blend of whiny pleading, triumphal worship, sweeping rhetoric and peculiar logic. (But because this is poetry, and not theology, we have to forgive him.)

This psalm has, in its middle, a list of big questions, all on the list of things science cannot answer. Here is that list:

• Will the Lord reject forever?
• Will he never show his favour again?
• Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
• Has his promise failed for all time?
• Has God forgotten to be merciful?
• Has he in anger withheld his compassion?

Yes, it's quite a list. How are those questions to be answered?

Asaph goes to the historical paradigm for that. He asks the question, "Is there evidence for or against these things being likely, based on past performances?" He finds reassurance in the historical record. And he penultimately concludes, "Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen."

It is an affirmation of God's logical position in the universe. In order to give space for the exercise of some freedom of will, and to allow for the question of faith, his footprints cannot be seen even though his paths are visible to all.

Victorious

It was an age of idealism. It was an age in which an educator could write something like this and not have it tainted with cynicism or eyed with skepticism:

The coming year is full of promise, and God seems to smile upon a work that was begun and is carried on in his name. Some will naturally enquire if our only business is to gain percentages and promote boys in their standards. As well might we say that the erecting of a place of worship and collecting people in it are the chief aim of the Church, yet the building is needful, and the people are essential to the very existence of the Church. We have the boys, and we are attempting to teach them, but we do not forget for a moment that our great object is directly and indirectly to mould their characters and shape their destinies for eternity.

So went the report on the College of Wyverns in the days of the dauntless hero.

The Legacy of Simon Magus

I think Christian education, sadly, is becoming an oxymoron. To be Christian is more and more to deliberately embrace ignorance of the Word because 'knowledge puffs up'. But knowledge of the Word is specifically seen as one of the marks of a believer's maturity (even though it is not the only mark).

To be exact, the phrase quoted comes from I Corinthians 8, and it is part of a longer argument. What is argued is that some people are not as learned, and have simpler consciences, so what is acceptable practice to the learned may be injurious to the less learned. Therefore if you find that you can adopt a pagan practice and there is actually nothing in the scriptures against it (for example, smoking cannabis), you may be free to indulge, but this might cause those with a more sensitive or less educated conscience to sin in one of several ways. Paul says that he would even stop eating meat, if eating meat would make his brother stumble in the faith.

The problem of course lies in the context. If there is knowledge which the Scriptures confirm to be theologically true (for example, that Jesus is Saviour for all Christians), then it is not the kind of knowledge that puffs up, but the kind that must be used for teaching (i.e., doctrine), for correction, for reproof, and for training (i.e. instruction) in righteousness (see II Timothy 3:10-4:5).

This is where many who espouse some form of prosperity gospel are completely and sinfully wrong. The warnings against it are absolutely clear, whether in Greek or in English. Here is I Timothy 6:3-10, the words of the apostle Paul himself:

If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself.

Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

If the apostle argues 'we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out', what could he possibly be saying about the prosperity gospel? Do you think he is in favour of such a doctrine or not? And what 'all kinds of evil' is he talking about?

One particular word that modern Christians should retain in their (in recent years) emaciated lexicon is the word 'simony'. For some reason, it seems to have been forgotten; I suspect it is because this word seems rather unpleasant to the modern materialist ear. Simony is actually one of the great sins which the Lutheran reformation was opposed to. It comes from the attempt of Simon Magus to procure the gifts of the Spirit by purchasing them with money, as recorded in Acts 8:9-24.

I mention it here because it is very clear that the apostles were quite contemptuous of money and material wealth. In fact, they were pretty much proto-Communists in that they believed in redistribution of wealth from those who had excess to those who needed it (see Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:34-35).

In fact, there is no scriptural justification at all that wealth is the necessary consequence of God's favour, although wealth (like any other material thing) can be a blessing. It is easier to argue that martyrdom is a more common reward for using the gift of prophecy, for example, or that the gift of tongues is the least important of all gifts, used more for a sign to the unbelieving than for the edification (i.e. 'building up') of the faithful.

Head Knowledge

I get very distressed when I hear Christians look at hermeneutics and theology and say, "It's all head knowledge. It isn't necessary." They are terribly wrong, by their own lights.

II Timothy 2:15 says, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." It is a clear command to be diligent about handling the scriptures.

The wrongness of the phrase "it isn't necessary" is that it is a half-truth. The Bible and its contents and understanding of it are all unnecessary for salvation, according to Christian doctrine. But study of the Bible is necessary if you intend to use it as a workman uses his tools.

The problem arises when Christians bandy their own scriptures around without first trying to understand what they mean. II Timothy 2:16 says, "But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness." In other words, if you haven't studied the 'word of truth' and are sloppy at parsing or analysing (or 'rightly dividing') it, then you should avoid making irreligious and pointless statements.

That's not to say that those of us who have studied it should be arrogant. The text is complex. But the point is that anyone who makes a comment about a text should at least have a) read the entire text, b) learnt how such texts are to be examined, and c) learnt how to interpret the examined text.

Until one is reasonably experienced, one should avoid making statements about the text. And one should always be humble about accepting new input that is congruent with the entire text; you learn from fellow-labourers how the work is done. What one shouldn't do is blindly mimic or quote the words of someone else who is interpreting the text but not showing the principles by which he does it, or is using spurious principles.

All this applies also to the study of literature. Actually, this is why people who study any kind of religious text would benefit from being students of literature.

Is Christianity Divisive?

Before I give any answer, I shall make a specific point. 'Divisive' means 'having the quality of forcing apart, or of causing separation'. It requires that the target of this quality must already be divisible; i.e. it has discrete elements that maintain their individuality once separated, at least for a time.

Is Christianity divisive? The answer is yes. This opinion is arrived at by consideration of its basic mandates as set forth in the New Testament. Jesus himself says:

Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. (Luke 12:51-53)

The equivalent passage in Matthew's gospel (Matthew 10:34-36) says:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

In fact, the word of God is said to be "quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)

The point, really, is discernment. Although there is to be unity among believers, each issue can cause division. Sometimes, this is a pointless division; sometimes it is useful. It can be pointed out that without the need for division, the epistles would never have been written; each of them is designed to give advice and argument against or in favour of specific practices and philosophies.

But since the Bible can be treated as a weapon, it must be used appropriately. That requires hermeneutic effectiveness and consistency — people who use the Bible as a tool for dividing X from Y must read it like any other key text: it is indeed possible to use analysis of the text to discard spurious readings, and it is something the conscientious user should do.

Christianity is inherently divisive; it says that some people will belong and some won't, it says that some will be on one side and some on the other, it acts in the capacity of a determining (i.e. a boundary-making, from Latin terminus = 'boundary') agent. It need not be so, but sometimes it needs to be so.

That said, there is another possible point. The act of creating meaning is perhaps itself divisive. To say that something is 'red', for example, is to assert that other things are not. If they were also 'red', 'red' would have no meaning.

Would saying that something is 'divisive' then lack meaning? After all, if all meaning divides, then 'divisive' has no meaning.

I think this argument doesn't work: when we say 'divisive', we mean actively so, dividing with intent or with built-in capacity for causing discord. That sense is attested from the 17th century. In that sense, not all things need to be divisive, although they may serve to divide. In Galatians 3, as well as in Colossians 3, St Paul points out that within Christianity, certain categories — race, social status, gender — cease to be relevant.

Christianity, it seems, may be divisive. But it can also serve to unite.

Irresponsible Musings about Atheism and Science

The only scientific evidence I have that I am responsible for anything I do is the feeling that I am. Some people, whom we classify as psychotics, do not feel such things. In fact, some of them don't classify other people as anything except objects. Does this mean that I am indeed responsible for what I do, or that they are not, for what they do?

The only scientific evidence I have in favour of the existence of God is that I feel I am entitled to value judgements that have meaning. If I can feel such things, and they have an existence beyond mere chemical biology, then there can only be something that material analysis cannot detect.

To assert that there is a God is a special claim, a claim for which no affirmative evidence has been shown to exist. I say this despite the many claims of affirmative evidence that people have made; if you are inclined to put all these claims to the test, they are circumstantial at best, and not at all direct.

To assert that we are responsible for our actions is likewise a special claim. After all, we don't hold any other mechanism responsible for its actions. We don't hold animals or babies responsible for their actions. The only thing that allows us to claim responsibility is our own authority, our own belief, our own claims to intelligence, our own collection of chemical interactions.

We create predictions for how the universe should behave, and because this seems a specialised and valuable interaction to us, it leads us to think that this ability allows us to decide that believing in our intelligence and responsibility is somehow more defensible than believing in God. But it all boils down to feelings, value judgements, the favouring of one paradigm over another; it boils down to saying that our capacity to balk entropy is objectively important and shows that we are a significant anomaly. That is a value judgement, and it is as empty as believing in God.

I say this, however, in the sense that two full glasses are as empty as each other.

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Further reading: I've spent some pleasant hours at the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. The entry on 'Free Will' is of interest; how can we claim to have judgement and volition if we claim to be part of the universe of natural order and not more? Likewise, the entry on 'Moral Arguments for the Existence of God', which merely concludes, "Moral considerations give all a reason to examine the proposition that there is a God very seriously. For if there is no God, morality is a more perilous enterprise than if there is."

Disclaimer: Yes, I am a scientist of some sort. Also an historian of some sort. And some sort of some sort else. Does it matter? I am as much a bag of chemicals as you are.

The Ten Not-Commandments

Occasionally I think about the vast body of myth and legend that accretes on top of other stuff, like the layers of an ever-increasing pearl. Ever since the time the Israelites wandered in the desert, the story has been retold in Sunday schools an youth fellowships until what is 'known' bears no resemblance to the original text. Bear in mind that modern English chapters and verses have little relation to the original textual divisions, which were generally found in continuous scrolls.

In Exodus 20, God tells Moses a few things. He starts by making a few general statements, which have for some reason been elevated to commandments. They are actually a preamble to a legal contract, and are found in Exodus 20:2-17.

Thus, a good reading of the material that follows will clearly demonstrate that Exodus 20:22-26 amplifies and clarifies Exodus 20:2-7, about what exactly constitutes the authority and status of the first party in this contract. This form is repeated; in Exodus 21-23, amplification and detail are added. People who don't read this don't get it.

That's why people misinterpret Exodus 20:12, for example. The verse reads, "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee." It is meant to be clarified by Exodus 21:15,17: "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death... And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death." Obviously, if you do either of these two things, that is what constitutes actively dishonouring your parents, and your days will therefore be short.

The same is true for Exodus 20:13, the much-misunderstood "Thou shalt not kill." This is used as a prime directive, without differentiation, by a lot of bad readers of the Bible. However, this is clarified in Exodus 21:12-22:2; these verses clearly distinguish between murder and accidental killing — for example, if a man 'lies in wait' for another and then kills him, that's murder. It even talks about death resulting from accidental causes and under what circumstances a man can be held reliable — if an ox gores a person to death, then the ox will be stoned to death, but if the ox had a previous history of aggression, then the owner will also be put to death. Similarly, kidnappers and slavers (21:16), and thieves who break and enter (22:2), can be put to death. A person who has read these verses would not be such a sloppy handler of 'Thou shalt not kill' since the subsequent chapters make it obvious how that verse should be interpreted.

The last example I'll give is Exodus 20:15, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." This has nothing to do with lying in general and everything to do with perversion of justice, as Exodus 23:1-9 makes clear: "Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment: Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause."

That last line means that you should not let someone off just because he is poor, and sounds terribly unjust to the modern ear. However, reading the rest of it shows that the burden is placed primarily on the landowners and owners of animals. And verse 8 is an explicit injunction not to take bribes.

All in all, anyone who thinks that a moral code is based primarily on something called the Ten Commandments is not making sense. It is quite clear that the Ten Commandments are not the be-all and end-all of the Mosaic covenant; they are only a preamble, a list of key points, a sort of introductory PowerPoint slide, to be elaborated upon at length and not to be treated as the main presentation.

It is also clear that Moses broke the tablets of the law (Exodus 32:19) with only Joshua as a witness to this perfidy, and then proceeded to kill 3000 Israelites without God telling him to do so (read Exodus 32:14-28). It was one of many sins of anger that Moses perpetrated, but which God forgave.

Perhaps it's a good thing for professing Christians to read more carefully the entire burden of their scriptural heritage before engaging in unedifying arguments about all kinds of strange things.

The Argument from Lack-of-Design

I'm not an advocate of intelligent design. If God decided to make His design look incomprehensible to us, He could do it if He wanted. Just because anybody thinks something is designed doesn't mean it is.

However, I am opposed to what I call the argument from lack-of-design. To counter the idea that the appearance of design implies a designer (clearly, it can't), some people say that enough things are so badly designed that their ostensible designer can't have been very intelligent. Cue examples such as weird DNA sequences, knee joints, the apparatus of the human eye.

Actually, this is a very amusing argument. Let's see why this is so.

To begin with, let's define design as a process in which a situation of lower statistical entropy is planned and executed. By this we mean that the number of possible routes to reach a specific configuration of particles is deliberately decreased by the application of intelligence to action. Ideally, if there is only one possible route and there are many particles, then entropy is minimised for that set of particles.

This assumes a few things, mostly non-provable: an intelligence that can design, a will that can execute a design, a perceptive apparatus that can rate design as 'more intelligent' or 'less intelligent' and the power to execute a design without contravening its own logical underpinnings.

But the logical continuation is fascinating. Suppose we had a perfect intelligence (however defined) and it created a zero-entropy universe (by definition, a perfect design). Then what would it be like? The answer, I suppose, in the context of what we seem to know, is that it would immediately begin to fall apart into a random state of higher entropy. It would unwind, with patches of relatively higher and lower entropy randomly distributed.

It would produce situations in which any subordinate intelligence would have the potential for suffering, since such intelligences would be subject to local differences in entropy and probably able to recognize if they were 'better off' or 'worse off'. Those that were 'worse off' by any criterion would be 'suffering' from an objective point of view, and also 'suffering' from a subjective point of view if there were what we would call a time-based emotional component.

The inescapable conclusion is that the perfect design would necessarily create an imperfect universe in which suffering was one of many logical outcomes. What a bummer, you'd think, except that the fact of existence is a pretty good trade-off for some people.

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Random Notes:

Wait a minute, some Lack-of-Design enthusiasts might say. Isn't there evidence that the human eye is evolved to be better than, say, a mere photosensitive patch? Actually, no. It's more vulnerable to injury. But it's not worse. It can't see into far UV or receive radio waves for decoding. But it's not worse. It's not anything except what you want it for (or what you already have). If it could do better than it does, it wouldn't necessarily be a human eye. But humans are greedy and want X-ray vision. You'd need something like metal nerves for that. Could God have made it better? Well, my question would be, "What ever for?"

Also, the human knee (for example) could be in many states, some better, some worse. There would be no perfect knee. There would only be subjectively better knees and subjectively worse knees. For every 'better knee', some criterion could be located for which it would be a 'worse knee'. A zero-entropy knee would not be a knee at all. Think about it.

Thunder

It came even down into the little island and its little hills. The rain fell like spears. The wings of angels beat like shields. The fire was out this cold morning. But Christ is risen indeed, and the world is not the same.

Transdarwinian

In the last couple of decades, the determinists have hit the wall of reality while the atheists have been pushed to another wall by a tide of relentlessly unmindful religionists. The world is turning like Dorothy's house on a whirlwind simply because some people don't know where to stop.

For a start, I say to Christians (who the bulk of the relentlessly unmindful seem to be), "Have you considered what actually is necessary for salvation? Does it include the ideas that the Bible is a science manual and that Man is unable to write a Bible with errors in it? For if so, none are saved since those two points have been clearly and decisively disproved."

But in the humility of my own mind, knowing that I am all too fallible and human and prone to error of all kinds, I think of what might have been. I look at what the Bible says. And I look at what kinds of expression humans typically use. And I look at what we seem to see of history. And maybe...

Two hundred thousand years ago, God (in whose image man the scientist — as well as man the artist — was made) raised one particular kind of animal upright in the plains of Africa. For thousands of years, this animal had been viable, intelligent, but not going anywhere fast. And that is the message of Genesis 1, for it is clear that when God speaks, He speaks to an entire race of humans, male and female, and then He rests. They filled their African world, a world where no less than a dozen different population clusters of breathtaking genetic diversity could be found. This took 130,000 years.

Seventy thousand years ago, God inspired man. For some reason, the mind of man opened, as did the geography of man, and man exploded from Africa. But it was a slow and odd migration, for crossing the centre of the world (where Africa meets Eurasia) and then filling the rest of it with loose groups of random humans, took 60,000 years. And then man decided to build permanent settlements in Eden, where God had finally placed him — for that is what history tells us.

And somewhere around 6000 BC, where recorded history first begins in written language, the second narrative of Genesis has begun. For there are two creation stories in the first three chapters of that book, and one question has always been, why two? And perhaps the first is the story of Man the organism, while the second is the story of Man the inspired. Where inspiration arises, choice follows, and where choice appears, change will come.

Genesis 4 tells us that Cain, the farmer who founded a city killed his brother Abel the nomadic herder. It might have been literal, but it is certainly historical in vision. For the third son of Adam was Seth, and in his time, men adopted organised religion. There is no way to prove that any of these people existed, but history tells us that the kinds of people they represent did indeed arise in that order.

Who knows the mind of God? We see in part, as if through a glass darkly; we know in part and think in pieces. And we don't have all the pieces, and never will have, till time ends.

There is a strange world out there, with mysteries which we know because of our science and our reasoning will not be solved. The narratives we spin and contest may incite fear and division, or inspire great feats of achievement, or may have no meaning at all. But one thing is for sure — Christians spend too much time contesting the little firefights and not looking at the prize they claim to be aiming for. You don't need to fight science to be holy.

Catalysis

I look at him and he looks at me. There is always something lazy there, which binds curiosity with disdain. On one hand, the cat contemplates me with a certain mild wonder as to whether I might indeed be coming by with food, a back-scratch or some other companionable activity; on the other hand, that lazy looks says, "I might care, or I might not; and in the end, it is all one."

I think of cats, and I think of God. With all the running around and theological infighting and heresies, heterodoxies, 'ways to God' or 'ways to Hell', theisms, atheisms and other God-related isms, it is all too likely that He, at the very instant of creation (or is it 'at every instant of creation'?) has decided that the the price of free will is worth the near-unbearable egocentrism of the human condition — just as we too have learnt to deal with the near-unbearable egocentrism of the feline condition.

I look at the cat: I, his nominal master. His entire existence is below the radar. I have no idea what he thinks and yet I think that God knows everything I think. The cat has his own anthropology, but what it is, we do not know. It might not even exist. In that sense, our forbearance of the cat is rooted in our ignorance. But God, ah, God is a different matter; His forbearance is rooted in the fact that we think He forbears.

In fact, we know less of God and His mysterious ways than the cat knows of us. His motives are arbitrary, as befits the Arbiter of All Creation. His ways are not our ways, and as the Bible shows us again and again, He is perfectly willing to let us be deceived while not being the immediate origin of deception. Most times, we deceive ourselves or each other. All times, we are fools.

I look at the cat. He is not now looking at me, but is flumphed across his cushion in the sun. And I laugh.

Faith is Weak

It was not always that way. As Matthew Arnold once wrote, the Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full. But since then has come the Enlightenment and the rewriting of the histories and lives of men.

In the past, you could believe. These days, belief is so weak that you need proof, without which you cannot believe. These days, faith is so weak that you need signs. I watch my fellow journeymen, my fellow Christians, and I realise that our common danger is that we are either Judaists or Graeco-Roman philosophers, just as is implied in this passage.

The key verses from the first epistle to the Corinthians read:

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom — but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

This is it. The Judaists require signs to establish faith; the Greeks require philosophy (sophia means 'wisdom') — but the Christian faith in its strength needs neither. There is no need for proof; only defence of belief and reliability of witness.

To the material world, which I sometimes spend time debating, I have one main argument: how do you know what you know? The answer normally is either given in terms of signs (sensory perception, data) or by sophistry and logic. But none of these is reliable except by itself; it is reason that makes us trust reason, and our senses that lead us to trust our senses. All these things are circular in nature.

But I assert that which I believe: that though I am doomed in my sins, I am saved by God through no inherent virtue of my own. At which point, the materialist says, "You make this assertion, you have to prove it." And I reply, "No, I need not prove it except to convince you. And only the Spirit of God can do that. I need not prove it to myself, because flawed as I am, I believe."

The materialist says, "Your God is inconsistent, he defies logic." My answer is, "If He were consistent, then He could not be God." But isn't consistency a virtue? Isn't it true that God says He is the same always? No, He never says He is logically consistent; He is always the same but He is never quite perceivable as the same, being infinite.

How else would an infinite deity behave? Any of the proofs a materialist might demand would immediately make a not-God. Any limitation on His morality, His powers, His behaviour, His reason, this would make Him the slave of the material.

And so, I rest in a faith that is stronger than I. My own faith does not avail, for I am a scientist, a teacher, a philosopher, a person who must learn to put all that aside for this most important single matter. Then only, can I believe.