God and Proofs

It seems like there is always somebody asking for proofs.

As near as I can tell, God does not keep Himself busy offering proofs. 

(Himself/Herself/the Most Excellent Self, let's not argue English grammar gender problems. The Japanese grammar would work better -- 「御自分」(go-jibun) or something like that, but English does not have that, so we are stuck with needing context. "... in His own image, ... male and female". If I try to adopt the "modern" borrowing of plural for non-specific, it introduces questions of how many Gods there are, and that would be a distraction. I do that sometimes, but "Themself" just sounds weird to me.

Sometimes you just have to accept that, when it's facts versus ideals, facts win.)

[JMR202411020834 note:]

It occurs to me that I have an allegory that might help. 

If we are talking about paradigms and such in software engineering, and you work with the standard implementation of the language C++ and free/libre software methods, and we have a friend well-versed in Microsoft's .net, and another friend who works mainly in Apple's Objective-C and LLVM/Clang framework, and someone is there talking about Lisp, and Matz is in the conversation talking about Ruby, and my son is there talking about perl and its derivatives, and I'm talking about some highly theoretical stuff that I am trying to implement in a sort-of Forth derived set of languages, it's clear that there is going to be a disconnect when we say the words, "object" and "module", and even "stack", and "paradigm". 

These are necessary, vital concepts in software engineering, but the disconnect is going to be so great that we will often not be able to agree on important details of what constitutes proofs.

And yet the programs we each write will often function correctly cross-platform -- on each others' computers. Not always, but often.

[JMR202411020834 note end:]

When three messengers stopped by to visit Abraham on their way to check up on Sodom and Gomorrah (and extract Lot and his family if they could), the record does not talk about them proving their identity to him. Abraham knew.

Likewise, in the plains, when Jacob wrestled all night with a messenger, the record does not talk about the messenger specifically proving himself. It was Jacob doing the proving. 

And when Moses turned aside to see what the deal was with the thicket that was so brilliantly and glorious lit and not oxidizing, Moses didn't demand proof of who it was that spoke to him. He did ask what he could offer the children of Israel, but God didn't offer proofs, just a name -- a coded name, but just a name. And the elders of Israel didn't really argue too much about it, just complained that it was a hard thing they were being asked to do.

In the case of Pharaoh, that seems to be an exception. God allowed Moses to offer him proofs, but God knew in advance that that particular Pharaoh would harden his heart and refuse to believe no matter how many proofs were offered.

God didn't need to identify or prove Himself to Adam and Eve in the Garden. We can understand that, even though we understand that Eve was deceived. 

But what was Eve deceived about? 

Did the snake fool her into believing he was God? I don't think so. Did the devil fool Eve into believing he was an angel of God? I don't read that from the account, either.

God had commanded Adam and Eve to take responsibility over the Earth.

"Subdue" and "have dominion" -- 

In the cultural semantic we inherit from ages of examples of arbitrary rule by false royalty interspersed by rare examples of royals taking actual responsibility, we tend to read "subdue" and "have dominion" as license to behave arbitrarily. 

But it doesn't take a lot of thought to recognize that God has never told us that we should not behave responsibly. Quite the opposite. Whenever we will stop and consult with our conscience, responsibility is part of the discussion.

How were Adam and Eve supposed to take responsibility for the Earth? They were in the Garden, they were being taught be God, but they were being warned by God that knowledge of good and evil would separate them from God -- would cause them to die both spiritually and physically.

They were naive.

We can't get around that. They were perfect, according to some measure of perfection. But they had not partaken of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. They were inexperienced. 

They were naive.

And not just about sex -- Sex isn't after all, the be-all and end-all of good and evil.

They were naive about about consequences in general. You cannot take responsibility for a stewardship from God in your naive state.

God warns us of the consequences of experience: pain, trouble, death, even separation from the divine spirit of truth.

It's a warning in apparent conflict with the commandment to take responsibility over the earth.

He gave Adam and Eve the choice of which course to take, and he gives us the choice.

If Eve was deceived, she was deceived about timing. At some point, God Himself would have had to explain the choice in detail, and told them it was time to choose. 

Continue in your innocent state and never die, or risk making life-changing decisions.

That's a terrible dilemma!

Perhaps it's the original dilemma.

And that is the state we are in.

What proof do I need of that?

The Greeks wrote many tragedies about the consequences of choice -- the tragic consequences of choice. That's why they are called tragedies.

I think the comedies were intended to be about deliverance from tragic consequences, but I would be hard pressed to prove it. We have a different understanding of comedy today.

God knew that there would be some mistakes we would make that would make it difficult to listen to our conscience and turn ourselves back from the train-wreck courses we so often choose. He planned for that. 

He would send us someone to save us from ourselves.

If we only have one piece of paper, and no eraser, we can't afford to practice our sums because we know we're going to make mistakes. 

It's a weak analogy, but you've faced that worry about some decisions. 

Everyone has. Everyone does.

By sending the Savior -- the Christ, God provides us access to an eraser, and even sometimes to a clean sheet of paper, so to speak.

Of course I'm not talking literally about sums and differences. Our mathematics is one of our inventions that is ideal but not perfect, so even if our teachers have a ruler ready to swat our hands every mistaken sum we write, well, God can save us from that kind of abuse. Can save the teacher, too, if the teacher will. If we will.

If we had the complete record, we would know that God sent angels to teach Adam and Eve and their children about the plan, and that the argument Cain had with both Able and with God was precisely about that plan.

And we instinctively have some knowledge of this plan. 

The proof is all around us, if we open up our eyes. 

Riddles about the age of the universe and whether Adam and Eve really were the first humans, etc., are not relevant. 

We are free to choose what to believe, but what we believe then constrains what we do. And we are free to change our choices if we come to believe there were better choices.

Society was not always so. Even now, there are those who do not want us to be free to make wrong choices -- according to somebody's definition of wrong. And there are those who, when we have made wrong choices, want us to continue making those wrong choices because they think they gain some profit when we do, or because they think it causes them inconvenience if we don't.

The society of this world is much like Cain of old -- continually arguing with God because they don't want to have to go back and change their mistakes.

But God said, and continues to say, "If you do well, are you not going to be accepted?"

Are we willing to be accepted on God's terms?

Or, like Cain, are we going to continue to demand to be accepted on our own terms, until we do something that really can't be fixed? Something that can only be forgiven, like Adam and Eve forgave Cain rather than risk further reducing a population that was too small to sustain itself without help from God.

Something that can only be forgiven if we are willing to turn our hearts and minds God-ward.

And this is what repentance is supposed to be about.

Not about being punished. Not about arcane rules of penitence.

About re-pent-ing. Turning away from bad decisions even when it hurts to do so. About turning towards God.

Back to the God we came from.

What proof do we need for this?

... Let Them Worship How, Where or What They May

In the Articles of Fatih of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is this:

11 We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

We are serious about this.

The fashions and vicissitudes and culture wars, etc. of human culture have altered, in the common context, the meanings of every meaningful word in the above, but we are still dead serious about this.

I have tried to invent a new way to talk about this, without using the words that have, in the vicissitudes of history, become offensive to many, where I substitute the word "cosmology" for "religion", and such, but it only moves the goalposts, and does not lead to mutual understanding. 

And mutual understanding is my real goal, to somehow invite you and your friends, and your enemies, to consider that we argue about it more about abstract definitions than substance -- arguing about choice of dictionaries, in effect.

Even the phrase, "article of faith":

Article: 

Of the definitions in the dictionaries, the one that probably came to mind when you read this word is 

written composition on a news or magazine site

or such.

But what we mean is closer to 

clause

-- particularly a clause of belief or faith rather than a clause of law. 

Speaking of faith,

Faith: 

The popularized definition of faith refers to religious belief, and has even been pushed towards 

system of superstition, and choice of favorite comic book or movie series or other mythologies and their heroes

But what we mean is closer to

fundamental beliefs and how those beliefs affect behavior and thinking and lives

-- but if we are not careful, even there, we can fall into the false trap of the false dichotomy between faith and works.(It's not just a Christian thing, or even "just a religious thing", that false dichotomy.)

For example, if you claim to be an atheist or agnostic, that is an assertion of one of your core beliefs and how it affects your thinking and behavior. 

Or, if you prefer not to be accused of believing something, or anything at all, you still have a choice in your approach to understanding. Or even whether you choose to approach understanding.

And we want to allow you that choice.

Sometimes it is even a valid choice to suspend the choice to understand, rather than to choose to claim understanding. And we want to allow you even that choice when you feel a need to. 

Heaven knows we have found that, at times, we have had to suspend understanding in order to let God teach us something we couldn't understand before.

Freedom of Religion is not about freedom of choice of favorite superheroes. Or, it is not just about that.

I mean, if you choose a favorite superhero, you are often using that as a metaphor to talk about something deeper about what you believe or what you understand, or what you want to understand, or something else important to you.

That's what freedom of religion was meant to be when the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America wrote the First Amendment to it -- the freedom to take your own approach to life, to the extent that it's possible to do so.

...

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... and if this were to go viral, it would be only a matter of moments before the popular meanings of the phrase "take your own approach" were changed to something I do not intend, and, to the extent that such changes in idiom result from people's attempts to understand, I guess I have to allow that, too.

Addictions and Morality

This is, of course,  not the only framework for discussing morality, probably not even the best, but it seems useful.

Are addictions automatically immoral?

Well, we can bring up the example of the pusher, but that's too controversial.

So we can look at hand-washing.

You've heard of people who wash their hands obsessively, I suppose? Some people develop an obsession with keeping their hands clean, to the point of damaging their skin and of being unable to participate in ordinary social functions.

And someone is going to accuse me of engaging in hate speech against hand-washers.

We all need to wash our hands on occasion.

How much hand-washing is bad?

I think we can guess that a plumber will need to wash his hands more often than a software engineer who spends all his time behind a desk. 

Don't distract me about software engineers who engineer plumbing systems. Or about computer users who never clean their keyboards. 

The point is that there is no good single rule about how many times an hour or a day you should wash your hands, and no more -- no single rule to cover everyone.

So how can you define when it becomes an unhealthy compulsion?

If you're at a social function, and someone keeps excusing herself to go wash her hands every fifteen minutes, can't you get after her for letting her OCDs get the better of her?

I suppose you can, but are you not engaging in a compulsion to gossip and criticize when you do?

This will upset people who have a compulsion to tell other people what to do, but the only answer is that it is between the individual and her conscience --

-- unless she's dragging you along and making you wash her hands for her, I suppose.

No, there are valid reasons for needing help washing your hands, too.

Ultimately, the question must be left up to the individual to decide, between her and God.

Wait. If I say God in the current political climate, the odds are that you will imagine a cartoon caricature, or some caricature from some movie that focused on a particular or supposed aspect.

But if I say conscience, I know there are so many purveyors of arcane rules of etiquette that only profit the purveyors thereof, and of other such ideal-mongering, that most people have trouble distinguishing their innate instincts of right and wrong.

Pushers.

Our society seems addicted to purveyance, but it should be possible to refer to the tendency to addiction when talking about morality.

It should be valid to bring up the tendency to addiction when discussing the necessity for regulating the production and access to a substance.

It should be valid to bring up the tendency to addiction when discussing the need for laws punishing and prohibiting rape and sexual abuse.

It should also be valid to bring up the tendency to addiction when discussing monopoly power over technology, among other things.