Did Jesus Fail?

 Mark 11 (RSV):

12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 
13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 
14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 
16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 
17 And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

(Then seeing the withered fig tree the next day)

23 Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.

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Did Jesus fail?  Did Jesus cleanse the Temple like Joshua fought the battle of Jericho--as the leader. If he single-handedly caused all that chaos, the merchants would have stopped him themselves, much less the Temple guards who were there for that purpose. He had to have been leading a significant band of followers, some (like Peter) who were armed.

Not only did he lead this operation, but he embargoed the trade in sacrificial animal merchandise for the rest of the day, an impossible feat for one man. The point? His faith did not move the mountain--God didn't show up as he expected Him to do once the Temple was cleansed. The passage about moving mountains by faith immediately follows this, but most likely preceded it originally, just as the passage about cursing the fruitless fig tree (a symbol for his fruitless mission) originally followed it.

Perhaps the chief priests feared Jesus somewhat because of his influence with the people, but more so because the people were very large in number and armed. The irony is that the people probably started to disperse at the end of the day after Jesus failure, some even becoming some of those calling for his death because of it.

In any case, Jesus was crucified, the Roman punishment for insurrection, not for theft, so the other two that were crucified with Jesus were likely two of his followers, not thieves.

Verse 23 appears to be Jesus encouraging or preaching to himself, trying to assuage his doubt.  John the Baptizer's execution had shaken his faith to the core.  It appears he believed  the fruitless fig tree to be a bad omen.  And then, above all, God did not re-inhabited the Temple following its cleansing.  For us, it's just more evidence that God (if He exists) does not intervene, ever, for ANY reason--but Jesus' unreasoned faith kept him from recognizing that evident fact.  The ultimate point is, Jesus believed in revelation, divine intervention and the power of faith, but he was killed anyway, leading to his cry from the cross asking why God had abandoned him.

Yet Jesus' faith was enough to kill the fig tree?  That smacks more of coincidence or latter day editing, exchanging the curse passage with the passage on faith as suggested above.

Did God abandon him?  No. God's prime directive remains the protection of our free will, free from irrational, supernatural exceptions to the natural law that governs our rational universe.

What is The Meaning of Life?

It's become almost a cliche to ridicule the question.  How can we know why we're here if we're not given any reason, purpose or meaning whatsoever?  The only guides that claim to be a book of instructions for living are the self-titled "Holy" Scriptures that are loaded with contradictions and falsehoods, and interspersed with occasional bits of wisdom or evil.  What can we make of the apparent fact that the only Word of God is the ever present natural law staring us in the face, insisting that we take it from there.  It finally becomes obvious that determining the meaning, if there is to be any,  is up to us, which is both exhilarating and terrifying.

Insight often comes from insignificant and unexpected places.  In a current movie preview, a character asks a question that is so above the rest of the subject matter it almost jumps off the screen, "What are you gonna do with this one and only life you've got?"  Profundity in a nutshell.  Since we have free will, therefore we're not going to be told what to do, it's up to us to decide, and it looks like we have three general choices.

The first answer, and probably the most common, is Nothing.  But is it really nothing.  In the old movie, The Magnificent Seven, Charles Bronson's character scolds a child for idolizing him as a hero because he's a gunfighter.  He tells the child that his parents are more courageous than he is because they assume the weight of the responsibility for their family; something he doesn't have the will to do.  Courage comes a lot easier if we don't care.  The only way to truly do nothing is to hide you light under a bushel chasing trivialities.  The true do-nothings refuse to pull their own weight, which often becomes considerable, sitting in front of the boob tube watching programs that offer no substance or challenge, simply making them comfortably numb.  These types may be less plentiful than we tend to think.  We can only hope.

The other two choices are polar opposites, doing good or evil; pursuing the Truth via knowledge, justice, love and beauty, or violating the rights of others for your own advancement, or worse, just because it feels good.  At first blush it appears simple, but we tend to oversimplify good and evil by making them a function of love and nothing else.  Is that correct?  Isn't it prejudicial to assume that we all have the same capacity for love, and if we don't, that those who have a low capacity are doomed?  But meaning, the pursuit of Truth, is up to the individual to determine according to one's abilities, drives and desires.  Charles Bronson in the example above, did well to point out the moral and virtuous behavior of the child's responsible parents, but he is contributing as well, doing what he is good at in the pursuit of Truth via justice.  No one can do it all, and we shouldn't beat ourselves up for it when we can't.  Our job, what gives us meaning, is to find what we can do, and then do it.

Value yourself and do what your good at while honoring the rights of others and their righteousness in doing the same.  Look forward to each day ahead, knowing you are worthy, you can contribute and you can enjoy yourself doing it. You can be no more generous to others than you are generous to yourself.

Is God Cruel?

Is God Cruel?

    “One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.”                         

                                            —P. J. O’Rourke

The following answer may not be complete, and there’s nothing that anyone can say to soothe the heart-wrenching sorrow of the loss of a loved one who died for no apparent reason.  However, even the most seemingly pointless suffering or death does serve one purpose; it is a monument to and a reminder of God’s commitment to our free will.  This may sound analytical at first, but its implications are truly profound.  If we are to have any meaning for our existence, we must have the ability to live and die with the freedom to make our own choices, free from the supernatural carrot and stick, enabling us to reap the rewards or the anguish of our own decisions.

Free will seems like such a trivial answer for all our senseless tragedies, but only if we don’t credit free will with its true value.  If there’s to be meaning for our lives, it must be through the exercise of free will.  This is not just for our benefit so that we may know that the choices we made were our own.  It’s also so that God may know as well that what we do is our decision, not what He created us to be or do.  This also gives the added benefit for God of a capacity to be surprised or delighted and to gain the eventual companionship of truly independent souls.

Some may reasonably ask, how can or why would an omnipotent God limit his omnipotence?  The paradoxical answer (question?) is, wouldn’t God be limited if He weren’t able to limit Himself, to set something beyond His own power, to bestow a portion of His power on others? 

Consider this short divine comedy:

***BIG BANG!***

           <<><>><<><>>

       <<><><><>><<><><><>>

<<><>The Universe Begins<><>>

God: Gabriel, isn't this a beautiful universe I created?
Gabriel: Yes Boss.
God: (Sigh).  Adam, what about you, what do you think of the universe?
Adam (voice of Eddie Murphy):  Oh, it’s absolutely delightful. I particularly like those sparkly little galaxies, and you just can't beat a brilliant sunset by the ocean or a thunderstorm over the Grand Canyon. I won't even go into women, you hit the jackpot with that one.  But those black holes are a holy terror. And WHY is everything SO----FAR----APART.  Man-o-man, the nearest star is 4 light years away. What were you thinking? And couldn't you at least do something about those damn mosquitoes. I hope I'm not stepping on any toes here, but if I'd have arranged things......
God: (Sigh)………(Smile)

 All this may be of little comfort for our sorrows now, but even the smallest soul stirs ripples and eddies in our universe, and our anguish at their loss is but a blink against the backdrop of eternity. 

"What we do in life, echoes in eternity", Maximus, Gladiator.

Thoughts

Faith is important, in fact, it is vital.  It consists of the positive emotions which motivate us to pursue the path reason indicates—emotions such as courage, energy, honor, nobility, patience, prudence, judgment, respect, self-reliance, sensibility, stability, grace under pressure, conviction and warmth.

Faith is the engine; reason is the operator at the controls.

Without reason we are blind; without faith we are dead.

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If you want to deal with or believe only in the subjective, be an artist.

If you want to deal with or believe only in the objective, be a scientist.

If you want to understand the big picture, be a veritologist, a pursuer of Truth.

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Wherefore angels?

What purpose would they serve? As assistants? Why, when God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient? As companions?  Wouldn't that be like having your hand as a companion?  Their "thoughts" would be divine pretense.

Which brings up another question, why demons? Don't we have enough trouble on our own with natural catastrophes, internal temptations, neighbors with their temptations, and our inevitable deaths.

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We wonder at this Creation and its cause, but it’s becoming apparent that the real wonder is how perfectly that cause has been obscured.

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As surely as we honor Truth as our god, we worship God--if God exists.

 

Corollary to Enlightened Self-Interest: We can't love anyone more than we love ourselves. If we dislike/hate ourselves, the best we can feel about others is nothing.

The Ethernatural

The Ethernatural

 
                                                                                                                                                              The following are several vital but simple scientific concepts or theories of which people are not generally aware.  Each are remarkable on their own, but taken together, they may give us a glimpse of the Grand Unified Theory of Everything, also known as, The Big Picture.  While this is by no means a scientific inquiry into the nature of the cosmos, these serious theories do offer a way to look at the Big Picture through a lens of rose colored intuition.  

>>The first concept, and the most difficult to understand intuitively,  is the multidimensional nature of reality.  Several favored physics theories offer 10, 11 and 24 dimensions, including our 4 dimensions (3 of space and 1 of time).  We're asked to think of these dimensions to be where space curls in on itself.  The curled up concept it the most difficult for us humans to deal with.  One way to wrap our brains around it is to think of our four dimensions as being extruded from all those other dimensions, likely during the Big Bang 13 billion years ago.

Two questions come to mind:  could there be an infinite number of dimensions, and is the nature of time we have here the same as it was before--if "before" can have any meaning at all.  With an infinite number of dimensions, time would be reduced to nothing, one against the infinite....time would be timeless.   Humans are unequipped to comprehend anything (e.g. God) that has "always been", or that there has to have always been something that came before.  Timelessness offers an answer of sorts--there was no before.  What was, is and will be, would all be just what "is".  There'd be no First Cause.

Thankfully, the other concepts are a little easier to grasp:

>>The Planck-epoch is the first and smallest period of space and time.  The minimum values are well defined and widely accepted, albeit infinitesimally small.  A Planck-time and Planck-length, are the smallest divisions possible to time or space.  The first instant of our four dimensional universe was approximately 10 to the -43 seconds after time zero; and the distance light would travel in that time is 10 to the -35 meters.

Yes they are incredibly small values, but the fact that there are limits to the division of our four dimensions begs the question, would these limits apply to any or all other dimensions?  Could the fabric of the universe be like a sieve, straining, enclosing or 'curving out' our four dimensions, yet impervious to other dimensions, or other as yet undefined entities?

>>Seth Lloyd, an MIT Professor of Mechanical Engineering and designer of the first feasible quantum computer, makes an excellent argument (in Programming the Universe , 2007) that the Universe is indistinguishable from a quantum computer.  To imagine the power of such a computer, a quantum computer's power the size of today's digital computers, would be comparable to comparing a digital computer to an abacus. A digital bit can be either 1 or 0, but a quantum computer's qubit can be 1, 0 or both!  Now, imagine the universe itself as a quantum computer.

Consider the implications if such is the case.  It would mean that every event from the quantum level on up, including our synaptic intercourse, would not only be abiding by the natural laws governing the computer/universe, it's reasonable to suppose that each interaction is being recorded.... for replay...or erasure.  (This last supposition is my own, not Dr. Lloyd's)

>>So, you ask, what about quantum uncertainty?  There are many competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, but only one, not yet in general scientific favor, which answers ALL quantum weirdness.  It's John Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, but the price those answers is a big one:  quantum interactions between particles are transacted both forward and backward in time.  Problematic, yes. but then consider the universe as a sieve which the transaction waves might pass "behind" timelessly, and we may have something to assuage our intuition yet.
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Now put all this together.  Could whatever's on the other side of that sieve be what we've come to call the supernatural, but is in fact perhaps what we could more properly call, the Ethernatural--the whole set of natural laws in a cosmos with infinite dimensions, not just four.

Comments welcome.  The Truth stands on its own and error will eventually fall.  Our purpose as individuals and as a society, is to pursue the several aspects of Truth via the infinite paths that lead to it.  Verum est Deus.

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The following is an exchange on this issue that occurred in another venue:

 Assertion: Skeptics, in general, insist that perception is unreliable and unverifiable. Scientists are skeptics and accept that their perceptions and cognitive skills are limited. Objective truth is a probability estimate (guess) based on available information.

No, skeptics, in general, insist that blind faith is unreliable. Realists (scientists) insist on a reliance on reason when dealing with reality. Pure hearsay evidence should be dismissed out-of-hand until such time as corroborating evidence surfaces. It's 13,700,000,000 years and counting with no such evidence presenting itself, and massive quantities of evidence against it.

Our body of scientific knowledge is information that has been deduced and proven to be universally and immutably consistent with natural law. For instance, the fact that we don't know everything about gravity doesn't mean we are unable to know anything about it. There is no reason to assume otherwise until such time as an apple falls up from a tree--and we can eliminate the possibility of artificial gravity.

Keep in mind, this is not evidence for or against God, only against divine intervention; intervention which would negate our free will.

Q: Is Divine revelation from the ether-natural?

Again, there is no divine revelation. All I'm suggesting is that our universe may exist "within", or be associated with, a larger framework of more elaborate natural law, which, until now, has been assumed to be supernatural or the suspension of natural law.

The only evidence we have for divine revelation is hearsay evidence passed on to us (most likely invented) by people who, given human nature and temptation, are much more likely to be doing what they do for self-serving purposes.

Enlightened Self-Interest

A common quesiton asked when considering a laissez-faire, non-interactive God is, how do we then know right from wrong?  Mustn't that come from God?

If we have inalienable, even inherent, rights, wouldn't the violation of those rights also be necessarily  inherent?  The biblical analogy of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is an excellent example, and in the process shows that the Bible does contain deep wisdom.  When they ate of its fruit, Adam and Eve became self aware, which meant they understood the impact their actions had on others.  We could then put ourselves in the shoes of others and understand how our own actions could cause pain, or pleasure in others.  It also made us aware of our nakedness because the deep intimacy of sexual bonding cannot be physically endured indefinitely--making our clothes part of the mate selection ritual, a barrier the removal of which indicates acceptance.

So then, is sex a subject for morality?  Yes and no.  First we need to determine what our inherent rights are to begin with, and  thus how they are violated--and to do that, we need to come up with what the objective of morality is.  Assuming we're on our own and morality is not coming down to us from God, that's very simple, Good Order.  99% of us (there's always that 1% who want to use anarchy and chaos to their advantage even though it usually puts them at greater risk) want and desire good order so that we can make the most of our lives in peace.  And the need of good order naturally leads us to the behavior we must observe amongst ourselves to achieve it.  So what rule(s) should be followed to achieve this good order?  It's incredibly simple, the Golden Rule is here stated as:

Morality is honoring the equal rights of all  to their life, liberty and property, to be free from violation through force or fraud.

That's it, that's all there is to it.  It covers all interactions between human (or sentients if we're ever faced with them from other worlds or from within our artificial intelligence).  And here the other shoe is dropped--morality does not and should not deal with individual codes of behavior.  For that we should apply the word "virtue" and use it strictly in that sense instead of melding them together, resulting in the "moral" confusion we've been experiencing since....the dawn of time.

Virtue is an individual code of behavior that is up to the individual to determine and follow, but is still subject to religious and other social pressures for non-mandatory conformity.  Immorality, on the other hand, is the only behavior that should be legislated and governed against.

Morality is so simple that it has only one cause, ego; and only one label under which ALL immorality (evil) can be placed, and that label is a legal/moral double standard.   When, we murder, rape, enslave or steal from others, we emote that our egos justify  putting our rights above those of our victims.  Again, morality is the equal rights of all.  We are not all created equal, but we all have equal rights, otherwise good order is impossible.

Even though this site is very much anti-Paul (some considering him to be the beast of Revelation), Truth can come from any source--babes or the devil himself.  In the following instance I think he gets it right.  For the biblically minded (who are certainly not dismissed out of hand, re: the Tree of Knowledge above), see Romans 2:14,  "Even Gentiles, who do not have God's written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. 15 They demonstrate that God's law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right."  NLT

....written in their hearts at the moment of self-awareness.  Truth must be accepted wherever it is found.

Finally, one can ask, what's to motivate us to follow this Golden Rule moral code?  That's where enlightened self-interest comes in, which is accepting the fact that we and our families are most important to us. that enlightened selfishness isn't bad.  Such morality promotes good order inherently, but we also increase that good order by the example we set in  following it.  Enlightened self-interest also compels us to risk ourselves to defend our own rights by defending the rights of others.  In other words we are morally obligated to help others whose rights are being violated if it is within our power--and it's almost always within our power to do something.  You defend your own rights by defending the rights of others.





Coming up next:  What if whatever is "outside" our natural universe is not supernatural, that is, where natural law and rationality don't exist.  Rather what if there is a reality of infinite dimensions which still follows a rational, natural law.  You could call it the hyper-natural, or ultra-rational or even the uber-rational, but let us dub it here as the:

Ethernatural

Job Serves a Summons on God

"There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name [was] Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil." Job 1:1

"Perfect"?   No authorship is claimed or implied, including God or Job.  It’s the first indication that Job is a parable.  Then later, the author has Job getting frustrated:

"If only someone would listen to me! Look, I will sign my name to my defense. Let the Almighty answer me. Let my accuser write out the charges against me." Job 31:35

But there are no charges, leaving Job with his frustration and his unanswered question, Why?

 Job is perhaps the most enigmatic book in the Bible.  Some also claim that it's the most deistic book in the Bible, but I think it was written as an apologetic for revealed Judaism in answer to that very question religious leaders most often hear, Why?

Revealed religions, by that very act of revelation, are unable to consider the possibility that God must not interact; and it isn't that God can't, it's that God MUST not—in order to preserve our free will.  Consider The Book of Life.  If there were such a book where our names are written from the foundation of the world, then we were all either damned or saved from the beginning. What, then, would be the point or meaning of our mortal lives--for God or ourselves?  Why would a supernatural God go to all that trouble to create this 13 billion year old natural universe, and put us through all these trials and tribulations if our fates were pre-ordained?  The Book of Life can only be a human forgery.

To make a very long story short, Job refuses the advice of friends and his wife to curse God, choosing instead to sue God, forcing God to make an appearance. Job's evidence is many oaths as to his perfection as a human. God does make an appearance in a whirlwind, but instead of answering Job, God sarcastically asks:  “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell [Me], if you have understanding."....Job 38:1 & 4  (The arrogance here can be nothing more than priestly intimidation in place of providing an answer.)

IOW, the author is having God say, “who are you, any of you, to ask that question of ME?”  The author, as anyone who’s advocating for the existence of an interactive, personal God, has no answer.  But there is an obvious answer—free will, so that the choices we make are truly our own, but that necessitates God’s non-intervention.  [i]That's the why of it.[/i]

This is clearly a human parable, which is further accentuated by the fact that not only is Job's wealth and status replaced, but he gets a new set of children, like so much chattel.  Although Job doesn't get the answer he was suing for, his being wronged is supposedly righted.  It's tantamount to a divine admission of guilt.

God?  Guilty???  What’s really going on here!

The author, attempting to answer Job’s question (actually accusation), fails miserably; and in an attempt to cover it up, he sweeps his non-answer under the rug by obscuring it under endless chapters of involved dialogue.  When one finally comes upon “God’s answer”, it’s very anti-climactic and intuitively unsatisfying.  But the author had to do something.  Like every other believer in a revealed, interactive God, he believed that God must interact with us and if nothing else tell us what is moral, but in fact, we already know (see below).  IOW, the whole assumption, the whole premise is wrong. God does not, cannot, and must not intervene....ever—not even to let us know that “He” exists.  Revealed religions over the millennia have felt the need to try to answer the Why?, because it is asked so often, but whatever answer they come up with, it always negates free will and rings hollow.

Even with the seemingly senseless death of an innocent child, God's non-interference is a monument to “It's” commitment to our free will, and a prime indication of its importance; the exercise of which is the purpose for the universe itself.  At least, when we grieve, it need not be compounded by that question.

God, therefore, must remain hidden.  We can never come close to knowing that “It” exists and that is insured by there being no actual evidence (other than human hearsay) whether God exists or doesn't.

What we have with Job is a priest or religious leader who continually has people coming to him asking Why? Why do bad things happen to those who are good, and good things to those who are bad.  I prayed but my faith that can move mountains did nothing. What is God doing?  Why doesn’t He do something? It's a very fair question, otherwise why should they be praying to and worshiping God, can they believe that God is good, or that "It" even exists? It's a question we're raising even more loudly today.

But suffering and injustice still happen with God watching.  Yes they do, and beyond explaining the reason for it, our free will, we must remember that this is but our threescore and ten against the backdrop of eternity.

So God, if He exists, must not even so much as answer Job's question. The answer is there and has been there imbedded in our psyches ever since the Garden of Eden parable where Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and became self-aware.  Thus, instead of Adam saying "Adam want Eve", he declared, "I want You."  Self-awareness also means that we inherently know what is moral because we can put ourselves in another’s situation.  And, unlike the animals, our awareness condemns us to possess the knowledge that we will eventually die.