What is the Living Word of God? Life implies growth and at least change, if not evolution. However, we know that God's word doesn't change, least of all to fit it's new environment as a living thing would.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Are good things for bad reasons good?
Philippians 1:17-18 ESV
The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice,
Prophecy has not changed much in the last million years
In the old testament, God spoke directly to a prophet, the prophet then spoke that message to the people.
Now-a-days we still have God's word, and we're still called to tell the people. The only difference is the medium (which is almost irrelevant) and that we're no longer individually told and instead the same message has been given to everyone.
Does God give peace to those who love Him?
Ephesians 6:23-24 ESV
Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.
I would assume that any feeling of peace and love that comes from God as a result of our love and faith would be a result of our brain chemicals generating the feeling of peace once we spend time with God and realize that the battle has already been won, and that our life here on earth is a fleeting moment meant to be used to prepare for the real life that comes next.
However, this takes some of God out of the equation. It's true that He set up the universe with its physics and humans with their brains wired such that knowledge of God brings peace. This, I think, sets God as the watchmaker, building us and winding us and letting us live alone with what he's given us.
I find my conclusion disturbing in that I don't think it's accurate. I'll have to look more into God's direct and present involvement in our life.
Maybe the problem is with the idea of "present" involvement. To one who exists outside of time, when is the present? I have nearly infinite presents, each taking a moment and literally moving on before I can know it's even happened.
God exists outside of time
And probably at all times simultaneously, just as we presently occupy several sections of the X, y, Z, and maybe also T axis.
Where we occupy only a part of each, God occupies every part of His T axis, wherever in x, y, and Z that may be. Therefore, He is the same now as He was years ago.
It's probably a good idea to thank God now for all of the things we've cursed Him for in the past. As stupid children, we've railed against the barriers put up in our life, even those put up for our good. As stupid adults, we at least have some of the benefit of hindsight, and can see where God's working in our life has been beneficial.
It seems like a silly idea now that I'm writing it down, but I thought I'd be a good idea to thank God to offset all of the ungratefulnes of the past, since He's probably hearing them at the same time?
Content and containment
Looking to a church for salvation is like eating tupperware: you're confusing the container for the content.
I ought not control what I have
I am stupid, small, weak, have a history of poor choices, and will probably die soon.
I know all of this, it's not like some well kept secret; so why do I still hesitate to give God what I have? I'm not going to build a maxed out FreeNAS box for the exclusive use of my cat. The cat doesn't care that it has 16GB of RAM or 10TB of stripped and redundant storage. It might sleep on the case in the winter, but otherwise won't care. Less than being grateful for it, its hair will clog up the fans and overhead the processors.
When then do I think I can use my body and brain better than God can? I have probably spent more time thinking up fast jokes than I have serving God. What has that gotten me? What do I have to show for all of the times I've REPLAYED Neverwinter Nights? If my assets were my children, CPA would have taken them away years ago.
Why don't I trust God with all that I have? Because I'm afraid of leaping into what I don't understand? I don't understand ANYTHING! I don't know how gravity works, which I've been surrounded by since before I was born. I've been using Linux on and off for almost half of my life now, but I still can't compile software without occasionally ending up in dependency heck. I don't understand what I'M doing with my life, how is that any different than not knowing what God wants to do? Am I afraid of leaping into God's will, but perfectly comfortable falling blindly into mine?
Further proving how dumb I am and therefore how woefully inadequate I am to manage my own resources, I still don't want to give God me.
And that's it. I don't have anything else. Hopefully the lack of a happy ending means that this story isn't over yet. Hopefully the God of second chances will give me my next mole of mulligans. I am left praying for forgiveness for a crime I'm already planning again. I don't deserve to speak to God, let alone request of Him. I'd like to end this entry with resolve to fix me, but I'm still too weak and stupid to do it. I still contend that more information would force everyone to love and serve God. It's a shame that my tiny, mishandled brain is probably incapable of knowing that much of anything. I can only pray for faith, and hope that God doesn't give up as easily as I do.
What's in your RAM
RAM is useful because it's a quick way to access frequently used data. Sure, you could stream all data live from your hard drive and keep all temporary data in your swap partition, but that's so slow, even at 7200rpm.
The human brain is similar, though obviously much more complex. Eisenstein once said that there's no need to memorize anything that you could look up in a book. Now with the wide proliferation and ubiquity of the Internet, there really no reason to know anything, right?
Well, what is the brain, and a bigger question, who are we? The person is not flesh and blood, or we would all be nearly identical, and a paraplegic would be less a person. If you pile a bunch of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen in a corner, it isn't human, just a bunch of dirty air.
So isn't the person in the brain? Lose a limb and you're shocked, but otherwise unchanged. Get a lobotomy and you're similar to who you were, but for all intents and purposes, you're a different person. So what in the brain is us? Are we a collection of memories? Are we nothing more than an artifical structure, conjured into being by the calcium ion exchange of a million synaptic firings? As scary as that may sound, I believe that we are. So if we are what's in our brain, then what's in yours?
Yes, we could always look up God's word online or in a book, but that's still keeping it apart from us. I think we should all memorize the Bible, not necessarily to keep it accessible, but to make it a part of us. We are told to keep the word of God in our heart, and we all know that most instances of the word "heart" in all of written history actually means "the brain".
Isn't it amazing how the Bible, written millions of years ago (or something, I really have no idea) speaks truths that we and our science are still finding out for ourselves.
Noah was told to build an ark of exactly the perfect dimensions for maximum seaworthyness, the same dimensions we use today. I think it was Moses who was told by God to circumcise babies exactly when their bodies would produce enough blood and clotting agents to heal up from that? (remember leaches being used in the 1800AD era to remove "evil blood" from a person's body to cure them? Moses' days were many thousands of years before then). David was given a vision, of which he described the earth floating in space. Some people (though few) still believe that the earth is sitting on the back of an elephant, which is standing on the back of a turtle, which itself is floating in a bowl of milk--or instead is just "turtles all the way down".
There is no doubt in my mind that the Bible is Truth incarnat, and the more we learn of our universe, the more my belief is strengthened.
If it was, will it continue to be?
With the probable exception of John 3, it seems to me that most of the Bible is written to a specific audience.
So often we assume that every word written is applicable forever in all situations. This, I think, is where the idea of contradiction comes from. A police officer swears to serve and protect, but then shoots some guy between the eyes. Is this a contradiction? If the shot guy was a wild gunman, then no, he was serving by protecting everyone in the gunman's scope. If the guy was a college kid in Ohio, then probably yes, a contradiction.
[editor's note: I have no idea how the police reference is relevant. It doesn't seem to be an accurate metaphore]
God tells us not to get drunk, and then Paul tells Timothy that he should drink more alcohol. Is this a contradiction? Or should Timothy drink alcohol because the dirty water is giving him dysentery and alcohol kills bacteria?
In the same vein, does all of the Bible still apply? Maybe we should still "not murder" but what about "thou shall not suffer a witch to live"?
Is the spread of the Word of God hindered by world peace?
If everything is great and cancer has been cured and hunger eradicated, are we all the rich man squeezing through the eye of a needle? Riches are as much health as wealth, if not more.
If we have everything we could want, why would we want God?
Isn't peace all we want?
All this "chasing the almighty dollar" and "worshiping mammon" is ultimately for the feeling of security and happiness--in other words: peace. I don't think most people actually want more money, they want what money brings. Having enough money (but not too much) actually does bring security and happiness because it can be traded for food and shelter. Once we have enough food and shelter, we can concern ourselves with creating art and medicine, which makes us happier and healthier when we share it around or trade it for money.
Money also brings power, but only when traded for guns or the time and efforts of other people to do things for you. Going even further, a gun doesn't inherently have power itself, only the power that's given to it by people who recognize that a gun can quickly and irrecoverably make our life worse. We don't give that same power to the money used to buy the gun, and only tangentially to the person holding the gun. If a child is holding a gun, you worry more for the child's safety than your own. If a monkey is holding a gun, you might even laugh at it unless it hits the safety button with a rock or something like that.
When we think of "riches" we often think of money, but really, money is worthless on its own. Only Scrooge McDuck would use money for anything other than trading for goods or services. Therefore, I submit that "riches", despite what the name may conjure, is actually just health, safety, and happiness.
If this health, safety, and happiness is what makes it difficult for someone to get to Heaven, what does that mean for our affluent world where Polio is all but extinct, and we can send cat pictures to anyone around the world instantly?
If this health, safety, and happiness is what we tell others that God can offer, why would anyone choose God? They already have most of those things, and they don't have to wake up early on Sunday or stay sober or celibate to get it. The only thing that I can see God offering that the world can't is a purpose in life.
Purpose is big and important to us humans, so it shouldn't be discounted. The closest thing to purpose 'the world' can offer is making life easier for yourself and others. This sounds good, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Life can't exist exclusively to make life better, that's tautological (my favorite word). If anything bad were to happen ever at any time in human history, then the purpose of 'making life better' will have--at least partially--failed. Wouldn't it then be better for all of life to have not existed in the first place?
It seems to me that every step we keep taking towards world peace is another step away from thinking we need God. The purpose of existing to worship God isn't detracted from, but its appeal is when that's all He seems to offer, right? Well, that and salvation of course.
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Reading over this, I think it's true, but I don't think it's a problem. Our primary goal in evangelism is not to make God more appealing, that's just a common means to the end of spreading salvation.
How many souls were saved during the fire-and-brimstone days? Surely someone was saved during the popular "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God" sermon, right? God was not gussied up and made appealing with His love and mercy, He was gussied up and made frightening with His wrath and riotous fury.
The spread of the word of God may be hindered by peace, but that doesn't change the Message or the goal, only the approach. If our carrot isn't as tasty, we can go back to the stick.
Personally, I think all of this world peace business is great. As a self-described "professional problem solver", all of this perpetual and drastic improvement to life and our world is bad for business, but I'd rather be a blissfully unemployed policeman than live in a crime-ridden world with a steady paycheck.
"I Am" is self-establishment
The best we can do is prove that we exist to some extent, because we think, therefore we are. We can establish our existence by referencing the proof of our thoughts existing in some capacity, therefore we must exist to some capacity to think them.
We require God to have created us to think thoughts, and it is God's actions that have wrought us into existence.
God actualizes Himself. We are because God made us. God is. He always was, and always will be. Not because something greater made Him, but because He is the greatest.
To follow that logic thread any further would be to make presumptions about the beginning of God, which I will never be qualified to make. Not only as a subject of God, but also as a finite being, only ever seeing and touching finite things, I have no concept of infinite, and as such can't conceptualize an infinite God.
What is a "majority"?
Majorities are made up by individuals who happen to all agree on one thing. In most other ways, they likely disagree.
How people regard people
Is the attribution of 'personhood' an emotional response to the recognition of what is ostensibly a collection of ideas?
If so, how far are processors from people?
Why is privacy desirable?
I like privacy, and it seems that occasionally we need reasons to defend what privacy we currently have been given. These are two reasons I came up with before getting bored of the thought exercise and never returning to it.
The working TL;DR I was able to come up with is:
There exists people who would cause you harm if they observed you performing some acts.
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Humans cover certain parts of their body for various reasons. Smarter people than me have explored and explained those reasons. One person offering one explanation said something like 'if humans were naked all the time, we would be having a lot more sex with a lot more people. Humans can't go around having sex all the time, it would be detrimental.'. Either they or someone else, or no one went on to say something like 'a lot of sex with a lot of people would spread more diseases, which harm the race as a whole and also the individual because itchy junk is bad. Also, we benefit from actively producing and consuming collaborative effort in society, and it's difficult to build out new processor architectures while you're busy banging all the time'.
Humans, like all lifeforms, consume energy and discard the waste product of that energy. When ridding our bodies of that waste, we often use orifices that have been covered. We pull our pants down to poop. If we didn't close the door when we pooped, people would see us more naked, and might want to have sex with us.
Therefore, privacy in the bathroom is important to those who want it.
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A Theif wants your money, so they observe your PIN when you enter it at an ATM. Then they steal your debit card.
People who have not been mugged typically feel safer and therfore happier than people who have just been mugged, regardless of the value of the stolen item.
If you had privacy when you entered your PIN, not only wouldn't you have lost money to an ATM withdrawal, but the Theif wouldn't have even bothered taking the card, because a violation of your privacy is required to use the card against you.
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First Time Travel Test Tip
When time traveling, I think it would be best to generate a random string seeded by actual universal entropy, a pseudo-random string generated by a good software-only-algorithm (like AES or something), download the entire contents of Wikipedia, and make two copies of each. Then, over the ocean or somewhere that would be unlikely to have ever had anything built there (in most timelines), travel 5 seconds into the future. If it works, compare random strings and Wikipedia hashes to tell if the universe is at all different, and if so how that affected human history.
It will probably be impossible to tell if that time-travel event will affect the future, but if any of the hashes are different, then the time traveler has also traveled to a parallel dimension that doesn't share a common past.
Arguing Abstraction (tangent from "We Don't Want Freedom")
Abstractions are more often beneficial than they are detrimental.
Abstraction is the difference between typing on an iPad and typing onto a typewriter.
The taco vendor, for example, isn't trading Tacos directly for hamburgers and shelter, they're trading it for the permission to change the numbers stored in payment processor 1 who now and only now has the permission to request the changing of numbers in several communicating counting machines managed (via in house network administrators, who in turn manage via technicians (who were taught by other people) and motoring software (which was developed by other people and which relies on libraries and APIs created by yet other people)) by bank 1, which now and only now have permission to request the change of some numbers (via a complex network of trillions of communicating counting machines manage by (depending on the path taken by bank 1's numbers) any number of thousands of different companies, which are each composed of thousands of employees...). And now I'm bored of writing, so to wrap things up, the payment processor tells bank 1 (the customer's bank) to move some money into bank 2 (the taco owner's bank) who then moves some of that money into bank 3 (the taco vendor's bank) who is mugged by some jerk on the way home who makes off with taco vendor's wallet, but gets nothing because the debit card in the wallet holds no value to society without the permission of bank 3, which in turn requires permission from taco vendor. The thief can't get permission from the taco vendor, not that it matters because T. Vendor calls the bank and tells them to stop honoring the old card and to issue T. V. a new card, which can then be used to move numbers around in exchange for hamburgers.
If TV had directly traded Tacos for hamburgers, the theif would have gotten away with something that has value. Then TV would be 1 PreferredFoodUnit poorer, and the theif would only be 0.5 PreferredFoodUnit richer, because the theif prefers hot dogs. Not to mention, the trade value of an hour-older, third-hand Hamburger is lower that that of a newer, more 'original' hamburger. When TV had what was his, the cumulative wealth of the two parties was 1/2 (one wealth unit and two people) or 50% put another way. After the theft, the cumulative wealth of the two parties was 0.5/2, or 25% put another way. This is not to support the notion of "trickle down economics" as if the rich are benevolent gods creating opertunities for the poor to be taken care of. If TV had never eaten that hamburger and used it's calories to fuel his hobby of building bird houses, slightly increasing, diversifying, lowering the cost of, and otherwise improving the birdhouse market, then Hot Dog Maker would have spent more time looking for the specific birdhouse she wanted, and less time making hot dogs (and therfore improving the hot dog market for Theif and everyone else who prefers hot dogs (and also everyone who benefits from the contributions of people who prefer hot dogs)). If TV had instead put his hamburger in a great pile of other hamburgers, then the value of that individual hamburger that Theif didn't steal is much less to TV, and also Theif gains no benefit from not stealing the hamburger. Not to support the notion of "Robin Hood economics" either, but instead to encourage the production and consumption of all from all for all.
We don't want freedom
Choice is not what we want. Choice is a means to an end. All people are different, and the things they want often differ from other people's wants. We are only need choices in an environment that has not been perfectly designed for us. In this world and in these societies, we have a lot of choices. A typical middle class adult living in the United States of America is closer to living in their perfect environment now, than that same person would in the same place 100 years ago. If I wanted to eat nothing but vegan Tacos for the next 50 years, I can (ignoring human dietary requirements for the sake of this example). My desire is not to exercise choice, my desire is to eat vegan Tacos. Choice is a hurdle in the way of my Tacos. My life would be easier, and likely therefore more preferable, if I lived in an environment where ONLY vegan Tacos could be consumed.
The problem with a world of only vegan Tacos, is that Tacos, by nature, require many disparate ingredients, which require many different humans to cultivate. These different humans do not all like Tacos. Some want pizza. An environment perfectly crafted to make the life of one person better requires making hundreds of people miserable. Instead, we have manipulated our environment to make it easier for others to manipulate (ease of manipulation is logarithmicly increased as time and participating humans increase, because of reasons cut out and pasted elsewhere for the sake of brevity) by making many and different choices feasible to maintain. Tacos vendors and pizza vendors can coexist now better than they could have in the past. People still have to make lunch venue choices before they can get to the goal of "consume specific food", but the choices are becoming more plentiful and more easy to make.
One choice of "to taco or not to taco" is not a difficult choice. To anyone who likes Tacos, it is a natural choice, possibly not even a conscientiously considered one. I'd argue that even a subconscious choice is a tax on the brain (however small), but the argument against choice doesn't hinge on this single example. We are required to make tens of choices every day, adding up to thousands of choices every month, all to get to these food options. Every choice we are presented with is the result of a Cascade of previous choices, each of a result of the previous Cascade, and so on. In order to get to the point of even considering food options, a person needs to have a certain food budget, which needs balancing with the shelter budget, both of which requires money which requires a job, in which you promise an entity that you'll make choices on their behalf for 8 hours a day if they promise to give you money for it. In order for a person to even get into a position where they can trade their time and effort for money, they need to apply for a job, which requires spending 16 to 30 years in school, in which you chose to make choices congruent with those that teachers have chosen to request of you, based on a series of choices made by state legislators, who's job it is to make choices for the state with the permission of the people who chose to elect them. If our only goal in life was to eat a taco, and we were born into an environment where only Tacos and tuna existed, then choice would not be a big problem. It would be a single hurdle jumped once and immediately forgotten. That simple and immediately satisfactory environment is impossible, if only because tortillas don't grow on trees.
So why would less freedom be better? If a robot were able to analyze a lot of information about the various chains of choices required to be chosen to get to the end goal of Tacos, and then show you or pick for you the proper chain of choices allowed and lead you down the best path toward Tacos, your life would be easier and happier. Everyone wants to get paid the same for doing less work, right? Or paid more for doing the same work? If your goal is pay/tacos and you wanted to perform less work/choices to get you there, why wouldn't you?
An interesting and probably unrelated idea: It's not that I am powerful enough to make my taco dreams come true, it's that my environment is malable enough to allow me to choose that. Another way of looking at this, is that I alone am not powerful enough to do much of anything, but instead I draw on the power left by the fruits of the time and effort (as a result of knowledge) exerted by the collective of humans that have come before me. In the same way that I alone am not powerful enough to instantly communicate with someone on the other side of this planet, but someone before me created a number system, many others published that information (if only by previously creating pen and paper), many others distributed that information (and people continue to distribute it today), may others collaborated within that number system to improve it, many others worked to make it easier to use by creating simple counting machines, many others improved those counting machines into an abacus, then calculators, then computers, while many others manipulated these counting machines into drawing pictures and generating audible tones, and many others built on these manipulations to make them easy enough to use and cheap enough to produce, such that many many others were able to manipulate these advanced counting machines into communicating their numbers with other, similar machines, and many others built on those communication protocols, and overlayed many protocols on top of those simpler originals, and now we have SIP/VOIP/Email/FTP/etc, which I can use to instantly communicate with the other side of this planet, and soon (ish), the other side of this Galaxy.
As many others work collaborativly and even competitively towards the same goal of making these communicating counting machines cheaper and easier to use, our ease of communication and therfore collaboration increases, decreasing the work (again, work is often the act of making choices and then recording their results) each individual needs to exert in order to accomplish an arbitrary goal, and also causes further development of these communicating counting machines, causing exponential growth (and often therefore improvement) of all things.
Taco varieties increase so long as the cost of production decreases faster than the desire for different types of Tacos decreases, assuming there is reward for distributing Tacos (e.g. Trading Tacos for money which in turn can be traded for things the taco vendor wants, like shelter, entertainment, and hamburgers).
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