The Bonfire of the Vanities

"Vanity of vanity, all is vanity," saith the Preacher, king in Jerusalem. "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upwards." And much of this wisdom was the profit of painful years, for the Preacher pondered much, and the words of the wise are as goads.

I long ago figured out why religion is trouble. The stakes are very high. If religion describes reality ontologically, then disciplines like the sciences and mathematics, which limit their outcomes and scope of knowledge by their own rigour, cannot claim a monopoly on truth.

And yet, it is by their obvious stranglehold on description, manipulation, prediction and control of reality that science and mathematics have gained their hard-won prominence and domination over the souls of men. A scientific or mathematical theory, absent a 'falsifying dream' (as Hughes's Hawk Roosting has it), has great powers to describe, explain, or predict. It is on the basis of these powers that we are masters over reality as we know it.

But mastery over reality as we know it is never 100%. As the old school joke goes, "The more we know, the less we know we know." Science and mathematics are the guiding daimonia of technology and engineering, and humans will gladly forsake those daimonia for these material fruits of application.

That is why science as religion and mathematics as technology are uncomfortably true to life. No scientist knows anything except what he knows — this is the curse of the empirical and the rule of epistemology; no mathematician knows anything except by what he believes through the working of his rules — this is the curse of the logical and the rule of rationality.

It is only the religious who believe that not only do they not know, but that they cannot know, and what they cannot know is nevertheless of the greatest significance. And if they are right, the brightness of science and mathematics is like a light without lenses or augmentation; it is like using nothing but the visible spectrum and calling it 'diagnostic radiology'. In fact, it is worse; it is agnostic radiology.

This is why there are more and more people willing to blacken religion with the radiation of reason. It is the only way to preserve the new monopoly — by destroying the old one. But which one sees more? Which one is of greater value to humanity? Both might contend that they are the only truth. But the key question we have to ask is, "Can anything be supernatural and still be true?"

Terminus: SF&F

Often, this blog has posts about the boundaries between different areas of knowledge. In memory of Roger Zelazny, this post will quote from the dialogue between the god Yama and the monkey Tak. They discuss the nature of the beings known as demons, and this is how the discussion goes:

They sat in Yama's chambers, having taken a light meal there. Yama leaned back in his chair, a glass of the Buddha's wine in his left hand, a half-filled decanter in his right.

"Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak.

"Yes – and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape – then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect."

"Oh? And what may that be?"

"It is not a supernatural creature."

"But it is all those other things?"

"Yes."

"Then I fail to see what difference it makes whether it be supernatural or not – so long as it is malefic, possesses great powers and life span and has the ability to change its shape at will."

"Ah, but it makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy – it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable. The man who bows in that final direction is either a saint or a fool. I have no use for either."

It is that curious last paragraph to which I must draw the reader's attention. Four points of the compass? It is interesting indeed, and perhaps it shows more insight into the mind of Zelazny's Death-god than anything else. Four choices, and the one choice Death would never choose. But that begs the question, "Which one would Death choose?"

I'm A Jinn Nation

The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it is even stranger than we CAN imagine.

The Economist is a pretty serious and intelligent magazine, though permeated with dry wit and thus possibly combustible. However, the article linked to above is really one of those 'secret conspiracy', 'X-Files', kind of stories. Yet, who has read Neil Gaiman and not believed? You might find the jinn even in London, for the older cities are filled with genius loci of all kinds.

Ah, the power of it all. Imagination.