pinball machine God

Belief in deity is obviously a complicated thing. You could pick any two aspects of belief and make a pretty diagram, kind of like I have on the right, which depicts the magnitude and method of divine involvement.

The two dichotomies are familiar: Atheism versus the broad sense of Theism, and Deism vs. the narrow sense of Theism.  The reason I want to present the dichotomies this way is so that I can propose a new analogy: the pinball machine God.

Deists love their watchmaker God analogy.  This lovely little world is created with awesome science, and the awesomeness of science proves that God is.  Some deists might edge up the side of the side of the triangle a little.

On the other hand, narrow-definition theists might be offended at the puppeteer analogy.  They'd also probably be offended that I classified Deism as having the same magnitude of involvement.  But look at it this way: you construct and elaborate timing mechanism, flick the switch to place your bomb via an intelligent robot you designed, and then go out and get a cup of coffee, return a library book, and sit at a cafe overlooking a famous river of your choice.  As you're hailing the waiter for the check, the bomb explodes a hundred miles off, destroying your evil arch-nemesis' secret lab.

OR, you fight a half dozen lackeys at the lab yourself, using your super-awesome martial arts moves, place the bomb by hand, light it with a match, and run out, just in time to feel the heat of the explosion on your back as you roll safely onto the grass.

Either way, you still blew up the place; it's just an issue of method.

And even though it doesn't really matter which method God uses, I'd now like to explain my idea of a pinball machine God, which sits pretty close to the center of the triangle.  God constructs this elaborate machine for us: the pinball machine we call Earth.  There are an uncountably many number of targets, bumpers, balls, and flippers.  Maybe we're the balls, but God is certainly the player.  The coin is inserted, and God mutters under her breath: let there be light.  And the machine comes to life.

See, the the pinball machine world, there's a lot of factors.  Every ball starts with a unique trajectory, maybe some special dents and scuffs too, or perhaps they pick them up on the way.  Maybe they have different masses, radii, and densities.  They bounce around making and missing targets, ricocheting off of bumpers and running into each other.  An then, every once in a while: fwip!  They're hit by a flipper.  Maybe some balls are flipped all the time, and maybe some balls are basically never flipped.

The core of the analogy is this: it may be that God constructs the world and influences it certain ways, but that there's a good amount of randomness inherent in the system.  Random here doesn't mean that God doesn't know about or account for problems or peculiarities, but that God can't do too much about it anymore because that's intentionally the way he built the game.  Part of the joy in creation, I'd imagine, is watching something flourish on it's own.  Flourish?  Okay, maybe God the Gardener would have been a better analogy...

knowledge vs. belief

It's very common for Mormons to say "I know ___," as in "I know the church is true," or "I know that Christ is my Savior."  Today, we had a man stand up and shamefully declared that he didn't know, but that he believed, and it was one of the most touching expression of faith that I've heard in a good long while.

We also had an investigator sitting near us today, and after the meeting he asked me what people meant when they said that they knew something that is generally considered to be unknowable.  I told him that it was a way in our culture of expressing that one has had a spiritual experience confirming the belief in question, but that often times we just say I know instead of I believe out of cultural habit.  People simply like the strength implied by knowledge.

I'm somewhat comfortable with this specialized cultural context of knowledge, but my main struggle with this phrasing is that it discourages people that don't know, or that haven't had confirming spiritual experiences.  It's exclusive: you're not in the club because you don't know.  Because of this, the use broadens to cover simple belief as well, making the club more inclusive, but making things even more painful for those who feel they cannot honestly declare knowledge when they have none.

finding peace

Here I am thinking that 2013 is still so young, and yet it's almost February.  My plate is piled high with all sorts of things, possibly the highest it's ever been.  The semester has been ramping up, and things will continue to be busy until the summer...a five month long Thanksgiving dinner, you could say.  I go half mad when I'm not busy, so in some ways, this is a good thing.

Not totally unrelatedly, of late I've been thinking about how we find personal peace.  I was reading Ask Mormon Girl, this post in particular, and was thinking about how folks deal with personal problems.  Generally, we face two facets of any problem: how to find personal peace, and how to act.  While they are somewhat dependent on each other, I think that we can tease them apart more often than we actually do.  In doing so, I think we'll come to solutions faster.

For some problems, finding peace is surprisingly easier than coming up with a full-blown plan of action.  Then, once you're at peace, the problem matters less and thus the particular course of action isn't so important.

At church, I was recently called to work with the young women, ages 14 and 15.  Two weeks ago, I challenged them to identify negative emotions (anger, fear, jealousy, etc.) that they felt throughout the week, acknowledge that they didn't want to feel that way, and then to pray for peace and comfort.  I was thoroughly surprised when they reported back this past Sunday having succeeded in replacing anger with peace.  (Though I should have had more faith in them.)

I'm going to need to stay centered this semester, keeping my own peace at some pretty high levels.  My plan of action?  Prayer, meditation, exercise, and reading good books.  And, you know, doing my actual work.  Wish me luck!

Oh say, what is truth?

This morning I picked up Nietzsche's Between Good and Evil from my to-read shelf for my walk to work.  I skimmed through the translator's preface, bibliographical note, and actual preface--who knew a book needed so many introductions?  Anyway, when I finally got to the meat, Nietzsche asks questions like: What in us really wants "truth"?  He talks about the will to truth and the value of that will.  As he puts it, "It is a rendezvous, it seems, of questions and question marks."

After about the first page or so, I stopped reading to ask my own (unoriginal) question, what is truth?  Nietzsche goes on and on about truth and finding it, but let's presume for a moment that we have some truth, just a sliver of the whole thing, perhaps in a bucket, sloshing around, or maybe even in a nice cardboard box, sealed with masking tape to prevent it from slinking away. That's all well and good, but how do we know that it's actually truth?  And once we identify it, what do we do with it?

Is truth something we put under our pillow at night, like a child's tooth?  Is it something we sell?  That Mr. Janson has quite a bucketful of truth, I've heard.  Excellent investment.  Does it simply make us feel good?  Does it show others our greatness?  Does it make the world a better place?  (And how do we define better?  We'll need another bucket.)  Our understanding of truth guides our actions, but can't good things happen with a false understanding of the world?  Sometimes an increase in truth causes an increase in harm. Or does that violate the definition of truth?  In essence, what role should truth play in our lives?

The struggle for truth is the journey through what we have been taught, with our mind as a compass.  The hope is that when we reach the summit, we will be able to look back and say "There was beauty in my struggle.  I am glad I am here."  This journey features our heart--our feelings, be they nurture or nature--against our mind, the part of us we see as logical or rational.  If that's not complicated enough, the set to this play is also crucial--we live in a physical world and exist as embodied individuals.

Does any of it matter?  Well, it certainly matters in that lots of people think (or feel) that it matters.  I'm starting to feel that the endless nitpicking and banter doesn't matter...that it doesn't help discover truth.  I've found that truth is more experiential, that is that the embodiment is more important than I had previously realized.  (I know that there are many people with severely limited bodies, but that doesn't mean that their physical experiences are any less valid.)  Let me give you an example.

I've seen lots of violets all over the place recently.  Their existence is truth; my seeing them is truth; my writing about them in this post is truth.  Why does it matter?  Acknowledging the truthfulness or reality of things or experiences amplifies my experience of their beauty.  And why does beauty matter?  It's my drug.  Less crudely, my experiencing real beauty, the development of my inner light, is the driving force in my life.  But then, what is real beauty?  I know it when I feel it, which makes me an irrational beast.

inner light

I'm going to shamelessly borrow from Quaker phraseology and talk about my "inner light."

Roughly a week ago, I came to the realization that my inner light was depleted.  I've been increasingly negative and pessimistic.  I've been self-critical in a bad way; I keep dwelling on things that I've done wrong or might have done wrong.  I've been over critical of myself in social situations: I see myself as too talkative or opinionated and I kick myself over bad phrasing or poorly contextualized statements.  I muck up stories that were once funny, and I end up playing devil's advocate awkwardly.  Academically, I'm in a self-esteem low and have been focusing on how much I don't know.  But then I end up being overly academic in other situations.   At church, I've been paying attention to the statements I disagree with rather than picking out the good things.  Like I said in my last post, it's just so much easier to focus on the things that need improvements, and this has been going on in all areas of my life.  In fact, I've been feeling a little bit of this breed of pessimism about that post: I didn't articulate my points well and I was too negative, blah blah blah.  It's sort of a downward spiral.  I'm negative, so I feel bad, so I'm negative...

Just coming to this realization has helped a lot.  I still slip, but when I do, I just have to let it go.  If people take things the wrong way, oh well.  I'll do my best to both honest and loving and everything will sort itself out.  I was trying to come up with things to lift myself up: meditation, gardening, miscellaneous recreation, but it was just a shift of mind more than anything else.

This week I re-read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.  It reminded me that people tend to be too self-focused and that I am no one.  I reminded me to try and see the word as it really is, and that I'll never be able to see and understand everything, at least not mortally.  It taught me that nobody should be able to take away my joy.  It taught me that focusing on the negative is really just focusing on the self, and it reminded me of my mantra to be the person you want to be, right now.  A quote:

"Hell is a state of mind--ye never said a truer word.  And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind--is, in the end, Hell.  But Heaven is not a state of mind.  Heaven is reality itself.  All that is fully real is Heaven.  For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains."

I had a taste of Heaven once.  I was sitting next to someone I didn't like and didn't want to be with, hearing him go on about things I didn't care about.  To escape, I started thinking of the vastness of space and suddenly, I felt an incredible about of love.  For the person I didn't like, for everyone at the table, for the world.  We were all God's children, we were all equal, and hating anyone was silly.  The feeling of joy lasted for hours, maybe even days.  But in time I stopped feeding it and it faded.

I got a bit of it back this week, and the Lewis book was mostly responsible.  Writing that last post, though, was like throwing water on the flame.  While honesty is important, I think that I need to focus on goodness for a bit, until my inner light is strong enough.  With a sense of joy, things will take their real form, and thus my honest criticisms will be distilled (e.g. into what needs to be done for change) instead of occurring for enjoying the process of criticism.

The journey will certainly be interesting, but ideally, I'll never lose my joy, my Heaven, for too long ever again.

Faith and Apologetics

The Story of Vedanta, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Once in a tree there were two birds, one at the upper branch, serene, majestic and divine, and the other at a lower branch, restlessly pecking fruits, sometimes sweet sometimes bitter. Every time, when the restless bird ate a bitter fruit, it looked at the upper bird and climbed a branch up. This occurred a number of times and eventually the bird reached the topmost branch. There it was not able to differentiate itself from the divine bird, and then it learned that there was only one bird in the tree, the upper bird, which is described as divine, the real form of the other restless bird.

One thing that I have faith in is that I can be better than I am. I've learned a lot from past mistakes, and it's my hope that I can keep on learning. Thus there is some factual evidence in support of this faith, but not enough to prove it unequivocally to anyone, which is what makes it faith.

I feel that apologetics often gets a bad reputation, claiming that it's missing the point of faith or that it's focusing on the wrong things. But I wonder, is it possible to have faith without being apologist in some way? I don't think so.

My breed of apologetics tends to be inclined toward defending faith (and religion) as a mechanism for personal change and as a lens for understanding the world.  While traditional apologetics focuses on more physical and historical truths, how is this side of apologetics much different?  It's still defending faith with reason.

We're mostly rational creatures.  Even though faith is supposed to be belief that is not based on proof, individuals still cite spiritual experiences as the reason for belief.  I had this feeling at this time, thus this belief must be correct.  Isn't that the basis of faith for most believers?  I live this way and I appear to be blessed.  Is this not the evidence, or "proof" that believers show themselves?

My question is: what role should faith and religion play in a society and for an individual?  Teaching morality requires instilling faith in a system of rules, be it secular or religious.  Likewise, coping with death and sorrow, and achieving other kinds of healing (e.g., getting over one's own mistakes or being wronged) requires faith.  But all of these examples can be achieved without religion.  Is the biggest distinction between religion and faith organization?  Does that make religion just mass perpetuation of culture?  I think to some extent yes, but there are lots of advantages to having an organized, unified community, which religion tends to provide.

I think it's interesting to note that teaching religion requires apologetics, because you can't teach without justification and reason.

fiction or nonfiction?

In looking for something in the recent issue of The Friend, I came across the the article "Fiction or Nonfiction?", all about a little girl's struggle with whether or not the Book of Mormon belonged in the Nonfiction section, which she decided it did.

I'm opposed to the true/false binary for religious texts, and most bookstores and libraries agree with me.  They tend to have their own section, usually somewhere between cookbooks and biographies, saddled alongside opinion books.  Why?  I'm sure that in part they don't want to offend parties that believe that they are "fiction" or "nonfiction," but I also believe that it's because truth isn't so simple.

Take a look at art.  Do we categorize art as true or false?  Not really.  There are photographs and videos, which are "true" and can be used as legal evidence, but they can be edited and altered, and people can act.  Portraits are pretty close to representing reality, and have long been used for genealogical purposes and identifying criminals.  Even still, there is freedom for artistic expression in the representation of truth.  Landscapes and still-lifes fall into the same category--based on reality, but altered somewhat.  What about cubism?  Surrealism?  The pieces are true to the artist's intent, certainly, and that's their purpose.

Now back to writing.  Where does poetry fall?  And are journals fiction or nonfiction?  Every person has a bias in telling their own story.  There are things we don't see or understand from our singleton perspective.  And on top of that, we are natural storytellers, making up reasons for why we feel a certain way, even if a reason is simply created to justify a feeling.  So even if the individuals narrating the Book of Mormon really existed, they were still writing down their perspectives and they wouldn't have been all-knowing.

Religious texts exist on a plane of spirituality, not a plane of history.  Their purpose is to expand the mind, and draw closer to the divine.  The intersect history somewhat, to be sure, as do all things.  And we can project them onto the plane of history and learn from the projection, but in the end, they don't live there.  Things can be good and meaningful on either side of the true/false nonfiction/fiction classification system, but not everything needs to be classified that way in the first place.

It's common for folks at church to say that they know the Book of Mormon is true.  We'll, I don't know that it's true.  I know that it's good and meaningful.   It teaches me about the divine and about humanity.   Joseph Smith has a famous quote, "I told the brethren, that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book."  Here, I take "correct" to mean morally correct, not historically, and frankly, I'd rather have the former than the latter.  We can wonder and worry about its origins, tiptoeing around top-hats and seer stones or analyzing native american anthropology, but in the end the real question is: does its narrative help me in my journey to be the person I want to be?

at the end of the week

I almost wish it were a headache; at least that way I could take an ibuprofen and be done with it.  Instead, there’s a dull ache in my jaw from a set of teeth that would churn the world into butter overnight, if they had the chance.  The idea is to keep eating pretzels until it goes away, but it might not be as simple as that.  These pearly whites, or at least chocolate-stained creams, also set themselves against a deck of psychological desires, and not least of all the desire for purpose.  There are no pretzels for that. 

So I sit at the window and lust for the past.  I certainly don’t have enough money to create such a fantasy for myself--an elaborate historical reenactment--but nor do I have so little as to be driven to action by need; there’s an odd blessing in poverty. Sometimes it feels like the entire world is static, frozen in one moment for all time, and everyone reaching simultaneously, no one satisfied.  But then I emerge from my narrow view as if God pressed the play button in my brain, only to realize that it’s not one moment but several, playing indefinitely, over and over again.  I could probably make some kind of connection to the frame rate of this eternal moving picture, but the analogy is stretched already and I need to sweep up the pile of salt that has accumulated.

What I would really love is a farm: acres and acres for fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers; chickens, waterfowl, and sheep.  (I’d still import my chocolate, vanilla, and sugar; there’s only so much you can do on your own.)  I’d love to wear wool and make wooden furniture; bake bread and press cheese.  I want to do it now, I don’t want to wait until I’m no longer able physically.  But I won’t be financially able for a while.  Owning land is no trivial business, it seems.  I also want to go to grad school.  I love what I’m studying.  Is it odd to want to be two different people at once?  Don’t tell me, I know I need to find the balance between the two. But I'll keeping coming back to the impossible dream and repeating myself as long as the balance is still off.

deep breath

Alright, now that that’s out of my system, I can go clean the house.  Maybe I was just trying to find the motivation to do that. It's all just a mind game sometimes. The whole lot of it.

fundamentalism shouldn't be a bad thing

Late last night in the haze of exhaustion I had a thought that went something along the lines of "fundamentalism shouldn't be a bad thing...it should be about getting to the fundamentals of an issue or ideal, distilling the essence of it.  Why is that bad?"  An example would be that (in my opinion) there are three Christian fundamentals: that individuals should come to know and love God, that individuals should love others in a God-like manner, and that Christ helps individuals achieve these through his teachings and his atonement.  Others may desire to include more things, but I think that all Christians would agree that these things are at least three of the fundamentals.  (If not, I'm sure a list of fundamentals which all Christians accept could be created with enough discussion.)

So, I asked myself, where does the negative perception of fundamentalism come from?  It makes sense that some people could declare a set of beliefs or ideals like I just did and that others would disagree, but who started calling them fundamentalists?  Shouldn't saying "right-wing fundamentalists" refer to people that have distilled a more moderate, all-encompassing set of ideals rather than people who have declared a more specific and less inclusive set of ideals?  Doesn't that make their beliefs irreducible (or maybe even radical) but not fundamental?

Wikipedia helped me out here, teaching me that the origin of its use as we know it today had roots in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy in the 1920/30s within the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.  Very curious.  Regardless, I dont like the contemporary use of "fundamentalist" as a pejorative term.  Aside from disliking name-calling in general, I think it's simply inaccurate.

rambles about the color of man's nature

Having just read Steinbeck's East of Eden, I'm plunging with more focus into a book I received for Christmas and started soon after: When Souls Had Wings by Terryl L. Givens.  In doing so, I'm discovering how little I know of classic philosophy.  Plato, Socrates, Aristotle: I couldn't tell you who wrote what or had which thoughts or anything.  It's quite a gap in my education.

Aside from that realization, I was shocked at how related the two books are.  Steinbeck's focuses on men's inherent natures and that we have choices despite our natures--all told in a story, of course.  Givens' book focuses on the history of the theory of pre-mortal existence, which is really getting at the spiritual component of that nature.

All in all, it's been fun to read them one after the other, especially since N and I had an extensive nature vs. nurture debate regarding gender with his parents over the holidays.  Maybe I'm just wearing nature-colored glasses.  ...If "man's nature" had a color, what would it be?  Green?  Brown?  Red?  Upmostly silly digression.  Another moderately-less silly digression: wouldn't it be fun to have book lists organized like old-fashioned music albums, where the books flow together, sharing some sort of theme between each pair of consecutive reads?

Also wik: mini painting!  I'm on a roll!  (Though I like this one less.)

holes in our lives

This past Sunday, I hit the local Quaker meeting. I went to a few of them at College, and loved them. The seats are arranged in a few consecutive circles, and people share their thoughts when moved.

For those familiar with the Mormon tradition of fast and testimony meetings, Quaker meetings are similar, except people tend to be more articulate, they have more discretion in sharing thoughts so a higher proportion of them are relatively profound, and no one feels the need to break the silence to prevent awkwardness. In fact, the silence is encouraged and part of the service.

Anyway, the service was beautiful, and one woman talked about filling the holes in our lives. She said that we all have holes and that we often try to fill them with things that do not quench the thirst or feed the hunger. She said that she herself played computer games, ate food she shouldn't, and chatted about silly things to fill holes. (No, this woman was not me.)

She said that we need to seek out the living water, the things that do fill the holes, and ground ourselves in those things. I love that this philosophy can be applied to anything in life, and I think it's beautiful. For the hole of actual, physical hunger, feed yourself with good food: whole grains, vegetables, etc.. If you are tired, sleep instead of having a stimulant. For the hole of loneliness, develop meaningful relationships with depth and breadth to them. Spiritual holes, mental holes, physical holes--this theory works for all of them.

If we achieve this ideal of always filling ourselves with things that truly quench our thirsts, rather than just delaying them, we will always be growing, expanding, and improving.